Press Play: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are an Australian seven piece indie rock group who formed in 2010. Since their emergence five years ago, the band has released seven albums through their very own record label, Flightless. King Gizzard’s 8th album, Paper Mache Dream Balloon, releases on November 13th and is already receiving high praise from those lucky music fans around the world who were sent advanced copies. 

There label, Flightless, is truly independent, featuring only themselves and a handful of other Australia based artists who play alternative rock in the form of garage, folk and psychedelic rock. Fortunately for those keeping up with RSU Radio, our station was one of those lucky music patrons in the industry to receive a copy of Flightless’ latest release, Paper Mache Dream Balloon. King Gizzard has quite the cult following and is extremely popular around the world and, in particular, at college radio stations in North America. 

King Gizzard are known globally as, above all else, a psychedelic rock group. The psychedelic rock genre, which began in the 1960’s, now encompasses an extremely wide range in sound. Among other current variations, there’s psychedelic pop rock, like Of Montreal and Tame Impala, psych-garage rock like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, and indietronica psych rock such as MGMT. Over the course of eight albums in five years, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard has tested out all the sounds of the alternative rock sub genre and clearly, the group is having a great time experimenting with their sound. 

Stu Mackenzie, King Gizzard’s lead vocalist, recently did an interview in which he describes the group’s musical focus with Paper Mache Dream Balloon. In the interview, Mackenzie said, “I wanted to steer away from electric guitar music, which I feel like we’d explored on the last couple [of albums]”. Accordingly, no electric instruments appear on their new album. That is not to say, however, that there is not an abundance of instruments. The group threw out all electric guitars, replacing them with only acoustic ones accompanied with flutes, the double bass, fiddle, harmonic, drum kit and clarinet. The result is a psychedelic folk rock album that is a pleasure to the ears. Many hearing the album for the first time will immediately be reminded of the great folk rock artists of the 1960’s. RSU Radio selected the songs “Bone”, “Paper Mache Dream Balloon”, “Trapdoor” and “N.G.R.I (Bloodstain)” for rotation. The album is great in its entirety, however. 

Click here to check out King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s new single on YouTube and here for more information on their record label, Flightless.