King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard have revealed that they’ve completed their next albums, saying they have “a couple locked away”.
Speaking to Australian broadcaster triple j last week, the prolific pysch-rock outfit described the finished, yet-to-be-released material as “jammy and meandering, kinda funky-prog-something”.
“They’re kind of a response to us not being able to get together and play during lockdowns,” explained guitarist Joey Walker. “It’s just jamming and the product of that. We’re really, really pumped about them.”
The band didn’t reveal any other details about the records, or when they might be released.
Elsewhere in the interview, they talked about touring their latest album ‘Omnium Gatherum’, which marks their 20th full-length effort. They’ve been playing a slew of international shows in support of the album over the last few months, including a recent stint in Greece which they had to play without a drummer due to Michael Cavanagh contracting COVID-19.
“I went to a Greek music shop and bought an 808 drum machine,” said Walker. “We essentially played all the King Gizzard songs over trap beats.”
Watch fan of that performance footage below.
‘Omnium Gatherum’ features vocals from singer Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s 98-year-old grandmother, whose voice appears on the rap-style track ‘Sadie Sorceress’. The band explained how this came to be in their triple j interview, with Kenny-Smith saying: “We were messing around with these hip hop tracks and pretty scared about where we were going with them.
“I was singing that hook… visiting my grandma and my sister said, ‘You should get Granny on a track’ and it was like, ding!”
“She’s got a beautiful voice,” he added. “She won the Brighton singing contest back in the UK when she was 15 or something. My dad has a recording of it.”
‘Omnium Gatherum’ arrived in April, previewed by singles ‘Kepler-22b’, ‘The Dripping Tap’ and ‘Magenta Mountain’. It follows on from their vinyl-only release ‘Made In Timeland’, which also dropped in March this year.
2021 saw the outfit release their 17th and 18th studio albums, titled ‘L.W.’ and ‘Butterfly 3000’, respectively. Speaking about the latter in a three-star review, NME’s Becky Rogers wrote: “It may be set apart from the rest of the Gizzverse repertoire, but ‘Butterfly 3000’ sounds familiar nonetheless.”
“It might not be a total hot Gizz summer, but at least we’ve got a few extra bangers to bask in.”