King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – K.G.
8 / 10 Interesting Unique Microtonal Album
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – K.G. was released on November 20th 2020 from Flightless Records in mnay variations of vinyl, CD, DL and Tape worldwide.
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – K.G. psych fans have all been waiting for the next installment in the everquest that is King Gizzard. This time the Aussie rockers put out a microtonal album meaning that it have middles eastern and south Asian musical scales for a world music flare. This is King Gizzard so the world music vibes are passed through the King Gizzard music machine and come comes out unlike any other album out there.
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – K.G. is another example of why King Gizzard delights and maazes fans around the world. There unique appraoch to all aspects of their music sets them appart. They have made albums that are, folk, psychedelic rock, heavy psych, thrash metal, experimental and jazzy. They know no limit to where their creativity can take them. Their hard changes in direction leave fans on the edge not knowing what to expect next or when to expect it.
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – K.G. has a strong focus on vocals through out the album with the vocals taking the fore front in the mix and sounding cleaner and clearer than ever. The voices still have some vintage compression and reverb but much less then in past albums. The band members harmonize and trade off lead vocal duties. It is impressive to have so many great singers in one band. This skill on the vocals acts as a super power for the band allowing them to explore many vocal styles and create inspired vocal arrangements.
The guitars play a lot of single note runs in microtonal scales. Microtonal means that they are utilizing a musical scale that contains more notes then the western musical scale. For example normally one would ascend A A# B but with microtonal scales there is A A* A# A#* B so notes between the notes. these scales are most common in music from South Asia and the Middle East. The microtonal approach makes the songs have a unique harmonic scales and asa result there are less chords and more single note runs on the guitars. The lead lines sound the best and use tones uncommon in the world of guitar.
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – KG
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are from Australia and have been releasing music since 2012 but emerged global awareness in 2016 and 2017 fueled by their legendary live performances on their world tour. This is a good time to mention that the King Gizz also released a Live album from the career changing 2016 world tour titled Live In San Francisco 16′. They released 5 studio albums in 2017 keeping their name in the headlines and making some of the best music of their career. This propelled them to a new level and captured the attention of all kinds of music lovers. the world tour in 2016 followed by the mega release year of 2017 was a perfectly orchestrated campaign that won them millions of fans.
In 2020 the King Gizz has focused on releasing digital albums and a few live albums and the last studio album was Infest The Rats Nest which is a thrash metal stoner rock masterpiece right up there with the classic thrashers combining complex rhythms with thrash and stoner its a smash classic. Now K.G. comes along and focuses more on progressive pop, folk and rock. They keep the energy high and the creativity spiking. The album sticks to the microtonal scales but explores a variety of styles of music on the microtonal mode.
‘Intrasport’ has a Turkish house vibe with snyth bass and Middle Eastern scales. ‘Honey’ is a folk song with popular appeal despite its weird scales. ‘Automation’ is a desert rock style with distorted guitars.
The secrets of how the album were produced and recorded are not know to me but it sounds like it was recorded over a period of time using a variety of settings and mixing it all together. some of the harmonies sound like midi processing, other times they sound natural and organic. They use many different tones through out indicating a wide variety in the equipment used on each song. The end result sound great there is a touch of lo-fi charm blended with studio production and recording. To me it feels like that album was recorded both before and after covid-19. The precovid sounds are the standard recording studio offer from the band and the post covid layers sound much more home recorded, intimate and free. The album sounds awesome and personal with warm tones and quality mix and master to pull it all together so wonderfully.
King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard – K.G.
https://kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/album/k-g
https://kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com/
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Thank you so much and yes we do all need psychedelic rock acid folk music in 2021 we need more hippies in our world. Peace n love brother.
Very informative!!! Thanks my friend, can’t wait wait until the next one!!! Much love from dmtworld.net!!!