Sure, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard haven’t even dropped their ninth record Flying Microtonal Banana yet, but the band have already opened up about some of the musical oddities we’ll be hearing on the bands’ upcoming records.
With their latest album releasing this week and premiering on triple j as this week’s Feature Album, the band had a chat to the station about what comes next for their musical exploration. With the new record an experiment in microtonal tuning and building their own instruments, where to next for the prolific outfit, who have promised to deliver three more full-length records before the year is out?
As it turns out, some new vocal techniques are on the cards, as is a whole lot of narration. Discussing guitarist Joe Walker’s unusual and seemingly-pitch-shifted vocal he busts out live on ‘Nuclear Fusion’, he explains that none of their massive band of pedals was responsible for it, and it’s actually his attempt at the ancient art of throat singing.
“We weren’t using a vocoder,” he explains to triple j. “I can do really bad Gregorian throat singing… I gotta get my shit together and practice that – it takes its toll.”
“There’s going to be quite a lot of throat singing in our next record, actually,” adds Stu Mackenzie “It sounds like we’re being sarcastic but it’s true.”
This little excursion into throat singing has kicked off a burning interest
Stu also unveils a little about their current project, and how it relates to both their past spoken word project, produced in collaboration with vocalist and harmonica player Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s father, Broderick.
“We’re actually making this record at the moment which is completely narrated throughout but it’s not related to Eyes Like The Sky at all,” he explains. “It’s kind of more related to Nonagon Infinity but it’s three distinct stories… kind of short stories that interlink but don’t follow in a linear sense. I think it’s going to be 21 tracks, so a lot of shorter pieces…”
“It’s Eyes Like The Sky-esque in the sense that it’s narrated and visual but it’s not really that kind of music,” he adds.
“Like the worst nightmare of Eyes Like The Sky – it’s pretty dark,” Ambrose Kenny-Smith (vox/harmonica) elaborates.
While this won’t be a continuation of that tale, it seems that Broderick Smith has already got that sorted.
“Dad has written the sequel to Eyes Like The Sky anyway,” Ambrose reveals. “We’ll get there; he wanted to take Miguel O’Brien to the Middle East…”
“I think he’s going to go to India and help build the railways there,” Stu embellishes, “maybe learn a bit of Kung Fu. It’s going to get a bit funky I think further on.”
Whatever happens, and whatever order it happens in, we’re sure it’ll all be as weird and wonderful as ever.
