We made a non-fan listen to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s discography back-to-back<\/a><\/p>\n What happens to a person after 10+ hours and 168 tracks of pure Gizz? Let’s find out!<\/p>\n This wild pacing and unpredictability gleefully defy all conventional industry wisdom, but the group’s risk-taking has been rewarded with a cult following of Grateful Dead-level proportions.<\/p>\n The most dedicated Gizzheads commit themselves to the band’s relentless touring schedule, taping marathon shows and streaming them online.<\/p>\n They pore over set list minutiae, and share bootlegs and homemade merchandise \u2014 all of which King Gizzard has actively supported since encouraging fans to press and sell their own versions of twelfth album Polygondwanaland<\/a>.<\/p>\n “For us it was always about being in front of people,” says singer, guitarist and band ringleader Stu Mackenzie.<\/p>\n “That’s how it always happened for us. And I think we try to stick to that philosophy, but I do recognise that we have been lucky enough to build up a fan base of people who follow our lead on all the crazy adventures we take them on.”<\/p>\n So, after 27 albums, 76 bootlegs<\/a>, and countless sold out shows, what’s next?<\/p>\n “Techno,” Mackenzie declares with a smirk.<\/p>\n After flirting with synths and sequencers on Butterfly 3000 (2021, LP#18)<\/a> and The Silver Cord (2023, LP#25 \u2014 this will be on the test), King Gizz have developed their electronic side touring a series of rave shows.<\/p>\n “We’ve been kind of trying to figure out how to do this stuff for years. The ultimate goal is live, improvised techno with multiple people,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n His gateway was the Eurorack modular synthesiser format which resembles an antique telephone switchboard.<\/p>\n “I’d describe it as synthesiser guts. Instead of the synthesiser being on the inside and you play the keys and knobs, the patch cables and everything are on the outside,” he says.<\/p>\n It is a thoroughly nerdy, hands-on process that is “so deeply up my alley,” Mackenzie chuckles. “I know so much about control voltage now.”<\/p>\n “Once I got over a little threshold of ‘what the f**k is this?’ I just fell so deeply into it. It’s fun,” he says.<\/p>\n The fixation has inducted a seventh member, Nathan, the nickname for the table-top pyramid of tangled cables, keys and mics that was wheeled centre stage for King Gizzard’s first rave show on Australian soil \u2014 a free performance hosted at Melbourne’s Fed Square last month.<\/p>\n “It’s usually something that’s done by one person. The way that we are all musically talking to each other [with this gear] is really hard to pull off because none of it is designed to do any of this stuff,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n In lesser hands it’d be an indulgent mess. But in the court of the Gizzard King embracing the chaos isn’t just custom, it’s proof of their mastery.<\/p>\n Searching for the same thing<\/p>\n Like Mackenzie, each band member has their own musical interests and projects.<\/p>\n Harmonica-toting singer and sometimes rapper Ambrose Kenny-Smith recently toured a collaborative album with Jay “Gum” Watson, also of Tame Impala and Pond<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kenny-Smith also fronts The Murlocs alongside guitarist Cook Craig, who has his own solo project, Pipe-eye.<\/p>\n Titanic drummer Michael Cavanagh releases music under his nickname, CAVS.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bassist Lucas Harwood plays in psych-pop quartet Heavy Moss, and singer-guitarist Joey Walker \u2014 the biggest cheerleader for King Gizz’s techno pivot \u2014 makes electronic music as Bullant.<\/p>\n King Gizzard (clockwise from front centre): Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Cook Craig, Michael Cavanagh, Lucas Harwood, and Joey Walker. (YouTube: King Gizzard)<\/p>\n King Gizz’s restless genre-hopping is driven by what simultaneously motivates all six members.<\/p>\n “Something where we can all fire on all cylinders and be inspired together. To be looking in the same direction at the same time. At the moment it’s this thing,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n “We’ll do this until we get bored probably and then we’ll do something else.”Celebrate Ausmusic Month on Double J <\/a><\/p>\n Tune in for all Australian Live At The Wireless sets, Take 5 interviews, Classic Albums and lots of great Australian music.<\/p>\n Showcasing Nathan on the next album is a logical step, but in the Gizz tradition of opting to zig when fans expect them to zag, that might not be the case.<\/p>\n In October 2024 the group took their improvised modular set-up to the studio “and it didn’t work that well,” Mackenzie concedes.<\/p>\n “We ended up with 57 hours of recording. [But] I don’t want to edit that,” he chuckles. “That’s actually really boring. It’ll take the amount of time it would take us to make a new record to just edit this stuff,” he says.<\/p>\n “So, it doesn’t always work, and that that is the nature of experimenting. You actually have to be at peace with failing sometimes.”Enter the orchestra<\/p>\n King Gizzard return to Australian shores this December for nine east coast shows playing rock one night, with a 29-piece symphony orchestra the next, showcasing their new orchestral album Phantom Island<\/a>.<\/p>\n Going symphonic wasn’t on the group’s bucket list, “it was just something that in the most beautiful way serendipitously happened”.<\/p>\n Namely, it was a backstage meeting with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that blossomed into an opportunity to play a US show with an orchestra.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n The band enlisted British conductor Chad Kelly to write charts, then arrange unfinished material<\/a> written alongside Flight b741 (LP #26)<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We thought, ‘Well, if we’re going to do one show, we may as well do a tour. And if we’re going to do a tour, we may as well make a new album’,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n Review: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard \u2014 Phantom Island<\/a><\/p>\n For their 27th album in 14 years, the wildly prolific Australian sextet recruit a symphony orchestra.<\/p>\n Phantom Island contains moments unlike any in the band’s far-reaching catalogue, with punchy brass, lush flutes and strings augmenting the band’s bluesy twang and Southern-fried psychedelia.<\/p>\n The songwriting has evolved alongside the sonics, revealing a sense of humanity from a group famous for their rock fantasies, chanting about rattlesnakes, dragons, and balrogs over gnarly riffs.<\/p>\n “In a lot of ways it’s a reaction to the kind of band we have become live,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n “We’d kind of experimented with making all sorts of different sounds. But we just wanted to write songs in the old-fashioned sense. I think that naturally led to a more vulnerable sort of songwriting.”<\/p>\n On Spacesick, Mackenzie uses an interstellar trip as a metaphor for the isolating orbit of months spent on the road, longing for the grounding of domestic life with his wife and kids.<\/p>\n “How did the little ones sleep? Did you make it to the zoo?,” he sings. “Your brother told me they cried a lot, when they saw a guy who looked like their pop.”<\/p>\n Loading SoundCloud content<\/p>\n “We all had a lot of life things happening,” the 35-year-old reflects. “A lot of kids \u2014 either just been born or about to be \u2014 around that time.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Just being away, on tour and navigating this period of life that we’re in together was definitely central to the whole thing.”<\/p>\n Walker and Kenny-Smith offer similar tender songs reflecting on habitually leaving their families and friends to meet the demands of their obsessive fanbase, self-made as they are.<\/p>\n “We’ve probably pushed the interpersonal dynamics [and] relationships back home too far before \u2026 health stuff,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n “We learned some lessons early on, especially in the earlier days of touring where we were going to Europe, the States, Europe, the States \u2014 five, six times a year.”<\/p>\n These days they’ve “figured out what feels healthy and what doesn’t. I would like to think we check ourselves. But I also genuinely really, really love it,” he says.<\/p>\n “The opportunity to still be on the horse after all these years \u2014 I try and not take it for granted.”<\/p>\n Ditching Spotify<\/p>\n In July, a month after Phantom Island’s release, King Gizz made a move more startling than going symphonic \u2014 removing all its music from Spotify.<\/p>\n The departure was in response to Spotify co-founder and executive chairman Daniel Ek’s venture capital firm, Prima Materia, investing 600 million euro ($1.06 billion) in Helsing, a German defence company specialising in AI military tech.<\/p>\n Why are musicians and listeners boycotting Spotify? And what’s next?<\/a><\/p>\n A growing number of artists and users are leaving Spotify. What’s changed with the streaming giant? And what comes next?<\/p>\n The news sparked backlash and a wave of users and artists quitting Spotify, including fellow Australian artists David Bridie<\/a> and folk artist Leah Senior<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senior, a long-time friend and collaborator of Mackenzie’s, was the catalyst for King Gizzard’s own exit from the world’s biggest music streaming platform.<\/p>\n Rather than being a political statement it was a personal, ethical call.<\/p>\n “I don’t want to soapbox or tell other people what to do. It just felt like the right thing for us \u2026 and it’d be cool if other people left, but I get it,” Mackenzie says.<\/p>\n “This goes without saying \u2014 you have to really believe in what you do.<\/p>\n “If you feel like what you’re creating is part of something that is potentially evil it’s not a very motivating factor to get up and go to work in the morning.”<\/p>\n Shortly after leaving Spotify, King Gizzard made their entire catalogue available through online music distributor Bandcamp with a “name your price” model.<\/p>\n Just days later, all 27 of their albums appeared on the platform’s best sellers list.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n