It’s 11am one morning in June 2021, and the musicians who compose visionary garage/psych/prog/electronic/
Unable to tour, to rehearse, to even hang out in the same room as each other, Mackenzie and his bandmates nevertheless kept busy during the enforced downtime, recording and releasing three albums of fresh Gizzard magic while in isolation. For these records, they taped their parts alone, remotely, assembling the tracks later via the internet. Not that you could tell by listening to the microtonal explorations of 2020’s KG and 2021’s LW, and Butterfly 3000’s voyage into the realms of synthesiser arpeggios. But there’s no denying that the vibe that June morning in 2021 – which also marked their first recording session at their new studio, Gizz HQ, in the northern suburbs of Melbourne – was something else, as synapses fired and the interplay they once took for granted sparked back into life. “It was insanely fun,” says Mackenzie. “We were like, ‘Holy shit – this is what we do! This is how we play!’ It had been so long, I’d forgotten. We jammed and recorded all that day. That’s why ‘The Dripping Tap’ is so epic.”
The 18-minute krautrock/garage-psych jam – an ecstatic pile-up of motorik vibes, giddy pop and gleefully gonzo crescendos – is the opening track of their 19th studio album, Omnium Gatherum. The title, Mackenzie says, is “literally Latin for ‘a collection of miscellaneous people or things’” – a fitting sobriquet for Gizzard’s first-ever double album, and their boldest, most ambitious, most far-reaching release yet. Conceived as a compendium of unreleased songs that had never found a home on previous Gizzard albums, the project snowballed, and soon the group were writing and recording new songs for the swiftly expanding album. And while most King Gizzard albums are conceptual works, pursuing explicit themes and singular sounds, Omnium Gatherum is the sound of the group getting loose, running wild and following the muse wherever and whenever it takes them. “We decided, this is like our classic sprawling ‘double album’,” grins Mackenzie. “Our White Album, where anything goes.”
As indeed it does. The majestic ‘The Dripping Tap’ is unmistakeably Gizzard, with its restless, interlocking riffs and supernatural changes of mood, but it pushes the Lizard Wizard jam archetype a quantum step or three further. The songs that follow chase familiar modes in new directions, or step boldly into the unknown. Some tracks return to the synth-psych visions of Butterfly 3000 – the neon pop of ‘Magenta Mountain’, or ‘Evilest Man’, an acid satire aimed at a powerful right-wing international media mogul. Others revisit the fevered thrash-metal attack Gizzard coined on 2019’s Infest The Rat’s Nest, the shifting polyrhythms of the none-more-heavy ‘Gaia’ devising a gnarly groove all their own. Elsewhere, the group play bold, unexpected wildcards: the chaotic funk of ‘Sadie Sorceress’ and ‘The Grim Reaper’ are remnants of an unlikely rap side-project the group worked on in parallel with Omnium Gatherum, while ‘Ambergris’ and ‘Presumptuous’ match hazy, soft-focus funk to an unabashedly pop sensibility – albeit warped in that unmistakeably Gizzard style. Goofball prog, colossal rock-outs and enchanting folksong abound.
A tour of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s collective imagination, Omnium Gatherum’s wild variety of sounds reflects that fact that it’s the group’s most collaborative album to date, with vocal duties shared throughout the band, and every member contributing to the songwriting. Its tracks were recorded at Gizz HQ, but also at their legendary, since-vacated clubhouse, 253 Lygon Street, or remotely at home, like their trilogy of lockdown albums, while the dreamy pop of ‘Candles’ was written and partly recorded by Mackenzie in Malaysia, where, pre-pandemic, he’d snuck off on holiday with his partner, a guitar, a keyboard and a recording gizmo. Lyrically, the themes are diverse, though the group’s concern for the ecological well-being of the planet remains a constant: see ‘The Dripping Tap’’s warning that “Our future’s hanging by a thread” and that we won’t be rescued “by the suits in charge of the world”, or the utopian fantasies of ‘Magenta Mountain’, ‘The Evilest Man’’s aforementioned broadside against a certain malevolent media mogul.
The result feels like a Greatest Hits album, in its variety and the strength of the songs – only you’ve never heard any of these tracks before. It's the sound of a group operating at their absolute peak, a group motivated by a deserved confidence that they could try their hands at anything. It’s also the sound of a group ready to return to the road after two fallow years – a handful of live shows in Australia, performed in the brief windows between lockdowns, has reawakened King Gizzard’s taste for live action. Festival appearances across the globe have already been announced, with further touring to follow. To say that they’re “up for it” would be a dizzying exercise in understatement.
For now, Omnium Gatherum’s sprawling 16 tracks of gonzoid prog jams, dizzying pop nuggets, rubber-legged hip-hop odysseys and passages of pure thrash-metal abandon offer plenty for Gizzard fans and neophytes alike to chew on. Typically, Gizzard albums pursue a single theme or style – for example, Infest The Rat’s Nest’s eco-themed metal barrage, or Butterfly 3000’s new age trance-pop, or Nonagon Infinity’s endless garage-prog contortions – and part of the thrill of Omnium Gatherum for the group was the opportunity new ideas without committing to deliver an entire album in that vein. It’s the perfect entry point for newcomers, and a solid treat for the faithful as well.
And Mackenzie says King Gizzard are already considering their next move, their fountain of inspiration showing no threat of ever running dry. “There are always more ideas than we either have the time or the skills to do,” he says. “We have lists of albums and ideas we should try that we haven't done yet. I don't know if we’ll ever work through them all... I hope we can keep this thing going for a long time. Maybe one day we're just going to wake up and be like, 'I don't know if I've got anything else to contribute. I'm going to call it.' Maybe that's how it's gonna end. But at this point, we'll just keep on making music as we feel inspired.”
It’s 11am one morning in June 2021, and the musicians who compose visionary garage/psych/prog/electronic/
Unable to tour, to rehearse, to even hang out in the same room as each other, Mackenzie and his bandmates nevertheless kept busy during the enforced downtime, recording and releasing three albums of fresh Gizzard magic while in isolation. For these records, they taped their parts alone, remotely, assembling the tracks later via the internet. Not that you could tell by listening to the microtonal explorations of 2020’s KG and 2021’s LW, and Butterfly 3000’s voyage into the realms of synthesiser arpeggios. But there’s no denying that the vibe that June morning in 2021 – which also marked their first recording session at their new studio, Gizz HQ, in the northern suburbs of Melbourne – was something else, as synapses fired and the interplay they once took for granted sparked back into life. “It was insanely fun,” says Mackenzie. “We were like, ‘Holy shit – this is what we do! This is how we play!’ It had been so long, I’d forgotten. We jammed and recorded all that day. That’s why ‘The Dripping Tap’ is so epic.”
The 18-minute krautrock/garage-psych jam – an ecstatic pile-up of motorik vibes, giddy pop and gleefully gonzo crescendos – is the opening track of their 19th studio album, Omnium Gatherum. The title, Mackenzie says, is “literally Latin for ‘a collection of miscellaneous people or things’” – a fitting sobriquet for Gizzard’s first-ever double album, and their boldest, most ambitious, most far-reaching release yet. Conceived as a compendium of unreleased songs that had never found a home on previous Gizzard albums, the project snowballed, and soon the group were writing and recording new songs for the swiftly expanding album. And while most King Gizzard albums are conceptual works, pursuing explicit themes and singular sounds, Omnium Gatherum is the sound of the group getting loose, running wild and following the muse wherever and whenever it takes them. “We decided, this is like our classic sprawling ‘double album’,” grins Mackenzie. “Our White Album, where anything goes.”
As indeed it does. The majestic ‘The Dripping Tap’ is unmistakeably Gizzard, with its restless, interlocking riffs and supernatural changes of mood, but it pushes the Lizard Wizard jam archetype a quantum step or three further. The songs that follow chase familiar modes in new directions, or step boldly into the unknown. Some tracks return to the synth-psych visions of Butterfly 3000 – the neon pop of ‘Magenta Mountain’, or ‘Evilest Man’, an acid satire aimed at a powerful right-wing international media mogul. Others revisit the fevered thrash-metal attack Gizzard coined on 2019’s Infest The Rat’s Nest, the shifting polyrhythms of the none-more-heavy ‘Gaia’ devising a gnarly groove all their own. Elsewhere, the group play bold, unexpected wildcards: the chaotic funk of ‘Sadie Sorceress’ and ‘The Grim Reaper’ are remnants of an unlikely rap side-project the group worked on in parallel with Omnium Gatherum, while ‘Ambergris’ and ‘Presumptuous’ match hazy, soft-focus funk to an unabashedly pop sensibility – albeit warped in that unmistakeably Gizzard style. Goofball prog, colossal rock-outs and enchanting folksong abound.
A tour of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s collective imagination, Omnium Gatherum’s wild variety of sounds reflects that fact that it’s the group’s most collaborative album to date, with vocal duties shared throughout the band, and every member contributing to the songwriting. Its tracks were recorded at Gizz HQ, but also at their legendary, since-vacated clubhouse, 253 Lygon Street, or remotely at home, like their trilogy of lockdown albums, while the dreamy pop of ‘Candles’ was written and partly recorded by Mackenzie in Malaysia, where, pre-pandemic, he’d snuck off on holiday with his partner, a guitar, a keyboard and a recording gizmo. Lyrically, the themes are diverse, though the group’s concern for the ecological well-being of the planet remains a constant: see ‘The Dripping Tap’’s warning that “Our future’s hanging by a thread” and that we won’t be rescued “by the suits in charge of the world”, or the utopian fantasies of ‘Magenta Mountain’, ‘The Evilest Man’’s aforementioned broadside against a certain malevolent media mogul.
The result feels like a Greatest Hits album, in its variety and the strength of the songs – only you’ve never heard any of these tracks before. It's the sound of a group operating at their absolute peak, a group motivated by a deserved confidence that they could try their hands at anything. It’s also the sound of a group ready to return to the road after two fallow years – a handful of live shows in Australia, performed in the brief windows between lockdowns, has reawakened King Gizzard’s taste for live action. Festival appearances across the globe have already been announced, with further touring to follow. To say that they’re “up for it” would be a dizzying exercise in understatement.
For now, Omnium Gatherum’s sprawling 16 tracks of gonzoid prog jams, dizzying pop nuggets, rubber-legged hip-hop odysseys and passages of pure thrash-metal abandon offer plenty for Gizzard fans and neophytes alike to chew on. Typically, Gizzard albums pursue a single theme or style – for example, Infest The Rat’s Nest’s eco-themed metal barrage, or Butterfly 3000’s new age trance-pop, or Nonagon Infinity’s endless garage-prog contortions – and part of the thrill of Omnium Gatherum for the group was the opportunity new ideas without committing to deliver an entire album in that vein. It’s the perfect entry point for newcomers, and a solid treat for the faithful as well.
And Mackenzie says King Gizzard are already considering their next move, their fountain of inspiration showing no threat of ever running dry. “There are always more ideas than we either have the time or the skills to do,” he says. “We have lists of albums and ideas we should try that we haven't done yet. I don't know if we’ll ever work through them all... I hope we can keep this thing going for a long time. Maybe one day we're just going to wake up and be like, 'I don't know if I've got anything else to contribute. I'm going to call it.' Maybe that's how it's gonna end. But at this point, we'll just keep on making music as we feel inspired.”
