The post King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard “Nonagon Infinity Live” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

There are 48 different versions of Live in London ’19 on Discogs, and probably more floating around out there in the universe, and almost all of them “bootlegs.”  The band released this one as part of their “King Gizzard Bootlegger” series in December 2021 as “a free and open album that any label can reproduce.” Romanus’ version is gorgeous, as you can see. I have a mind-numbing mandatory online training to complete this afternoon for my employment at a public university so figured some Lizard Wizard would help. It is! I’ll be making notes as I space out and groove to their performance at Alexandra Palace on October 5th, 2019 in London. 

King Gizzard has a little something for everyone: there’s ass-shaking jams for the psychedelic boogie folks, spaced-out noodles for Deadheads, and massive headbangers for the heavy metal contingent. I have top picks on this live LP from all three! Gizzard channels Metallica (specifically “Master of Puppets”) on “Self-Immolate” with some very impressive speed metal guitar solos and there’s more than a few nods to Sabbath and Motörhead on “I’m Not In Your Mind.” Jam-banding Dead style is especially prevalent on “Float Along – Fill Your Lungs” (the concert closer), though there are whispers of Zeppelin on that track, too, and then the whole blues-boogie thing that the Dead were known for can be heard on “Boogieman Sam.” There’s even some harmonica (and tons of distortion and craziness that does not cross into Dead territory) on “I’m In Your Mind.” Plus the two drummers/kits thing. My favorite tracks, however, are the psychedelic boogie ass-shakers that the band is known for, particularly “Rattlesnake” and the epic ten-minute psychedelic freakout with exotic guitar “Crumbling Castle.”

The post King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard “Live in London ’19” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard “Teenage Gizzard” 2020. Romanus Records, limited edition “splatter” variant. Recorded in 2010 and 2011, before their first  LP release, Teenage Gizzard is an “official bootleg” that compiles some of their early singles and an EP (Anglesea, 2011). The band released the digitial masters to anyone who wanted to press the album…and a TON of labels did, including my favorite Romanus. It’s lo-fi psychedelic stoner garage rock, a lot less polished than their current releases, but really excellent. Top tracks: the surfy, kinda psychobilly “Ants and Bats” (the b-side to the 2010 single “Hey There”), the garagey, pop and lo-fi catchy “Summer” (b-side to another 2010 single “Sleep”), the Link Wray-ish freakout “Fried” (from Anglesea), and the 60′s-style garage rock boppers “Good to Me” (also from Anglesea) and “Life is Cool.” And then the last track is Romanus Records own Chris Banta giving a shout-out thanks to King Gizzard and to all of us who are Romanus Records patrons 🥰

The post King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard “Teenage Gizzard” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

Australian psych-rockers King Gizzard released Polygondwanaland (their fourth of five releases in 2017!!) by uploading the master tapes to the web for anyone to use with the note “Polygondwanaland is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies. Make tapes, make CD’s, make records … Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy.” A ton of labels did just that; I have another variant, in picture disc form, from Shed House Records. That one is pretty, but this liquid filled from Romanus Records is ridiculously cool and also very special: Chris Banta (owner of Romanus) embarked on this ambitious pressing in order to raise funds for his young son’s surgery (it was a success, his kid is beautiful and doing just fine).

The post King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard “Polygondwanaland” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

We saw King Gizzard play a sold-out show at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee this past Saturday night. We had seriously nosebleed seats, the screen that hung over the stage that showed a psychedelic light show (I think) completely obscured by the ceiling’s overhang.

They led off with the first track from Flying Microtonal Banana, “Rattlesnake” and I’m pretty embarrassed to say that was the only song I heard in its entirety, though I’m guessing they probably played at least one or more tracks, including maybe “Sleep Drifter.” I am going to blame that song for my loss of consciousness on and off for the rest of the show. (My other excuses: I get up really early for work on Saturdays, we attended two parties that afternoon and evening at which I definitely had a few cocktails and lots of snacks.) To that end, I’m going to quote copiously from Milwaukee Record’s review of the show – their writer clearly did stay awake: “The setlist grouped songs from various albums together, drawing primarily from last year’s onslaught of material (excluding mellow jazz-ish offering Sketches of Brunswick East), but they occasionally referenced older stuff as well. Gizzard songs tend to run together on albums, and there are musical and lyrical motifs that appear across multiple releases. Adding to the band’s mythological puzzle, they like to toss song fragments in between and inside live jams, which included significant portions of “Cellophane” and “Hot Water” (from 2014’s I’m In Your Mind Fuzz) and probably others on this night, much to the delight of a sizable contingency of diehards in attendance…The meat of the set featured some of the band’s more dizzying, mathematical pieces. The dynamic shifts of “The Lord Of Lightning” were exaggerated to dramatic effect, and the polyrhythmic maze of “The Fourth Colour” was even more impressive when able to watch as drummers Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore stayed perfectly in synch. There was a surprising amount of improvisation given the unorthodox rhythms and often serpentine compositions that Gizzard favors. Even played straight, there’s something to be said for complicated songs played expertly, and while Gizzard can justifiably be tagged as prog, they get too fast and noisy to embody the usual preconceptions that term evokes. Following an exhausting trio of songs from Nonagon Infinity came the night’s biggest surprise: a stretched-out journey through “The River,” from 2015’s somewhat overlooked Quarters! album. The band cranked up the krautrock influence, turning the breezy tune into an intense, pulsing drone at times, fading almost to nothing in between sections. It brought to mind the heyday of dearly-departed local acts like Catacombz and Worrier, and that year or two when meditative psych/post-punk seemed to be gaining a foothold on the local scene. Maybe Milwaukee has been craving a resurgence in this style. You would’ve thought King Gizzard were local boys made good by the response they got.” That’s most of the article, you can read the rest here and see a couple of better photos than I could get as well, like this fantastic shot of the crowd at the end of the show (there was no encore).

The post King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard “Flying Microtonal Banana” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

Allmusic says about Polygondwanaland “[It] sounds like a consolidation of everything the band has done up until now, chewed up and spit back put in large and small chunks of psychedelic rock. The first song alone, the ten-minute-long ”Crumbling Castle,“ employs microtonal guitars, layers in synths, sounds like space prog, has laid back jazz interludes and heavy metal breakdowns, and delivers all the trippy punch of their early work. After all the experiments and tricks, it almost sounds like the band is playing it safe, even if the song is a rampaging ball of barely controlled energy. They really aren’t, though. Instead, they are delivering a record that plays to their strengths as songwriters and musicians instead of distracting people with some flashy idea. It’s straight – or as straight as possible – King Gizzard, and at this stage of their career, that’s a welcome development. Hearing them incorporate all the different sonic flourishes they’ve employed in the past in pursuit of good songs and not some higher concept means the album may slip past unnoticed, but it will sound great to anyone not scared off by the lack of theatrics. Tracks like the spookily restrained ”Searching,“ the rampaging ”The Fourth Colour,“ the tribal ”The Castle in the Air,“ or the thrumming title track are the work of a band in full command of their process and results. Their fourth album of 2017 may not be their most exciting of the year, but it is their strongest and shows that King Gizzard don’t need any bells and whistles to make a great psychedelic splash.”

The post King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard “Polygondwanaland” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.