![]() This record was us just trying to do that again. We lost track a little bit and wrote songs that didn’t quite fit in, and half-abandoned the idea. While we were making that record, we wanted to make a new record that didn’t stop and was kind of like one big song. Thinking back, I guess, a year and half or two years ago now, when we made I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, that had some kind of similar things in there, the first four or five tracks all kind of link up and sort of don’t stop in that way and have recurring themes, sort of like one big song. So, how did you come up with the idea for something that could loop infinitely? Oh, and also, how he feels being saddled with that Lizard Wizard name. We talked to Mackenzie about the new album, his non-musical inspirations, his need to experiment, and, as an outsider, what he thinks of this currently bizarre political climate in the U.S. And so maybe, more than anything else, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are a band of firsts. And so what if it is a gimmick? Has it been done before? Not that I know of. It sounds like a gimmick, but it feeds the intensity of the music, if you can believe it. The record can be played front-to-back-to-front-to-back and the sound won’t break. ![]() But the “coolest” thing about it is that it plays as a perfect, infinite loop. This album - the band’s eighth, though it does have nine songs, hence the title - is fun as hell, despite the fact that it sounds like the horrorshow of a face melting. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with fun, especially when it’s done so well as it is on Nonagon Infinity. Because King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is more fun than silly. He concedes that it’s worked against them, and that it’s silly, but adds, “there’s nothing wrong with being silly.” And that’d be a good enough descriptor for the band’s aesthetic, but it’d also be an unfair one. Mackenzie’s not quite so speechless when asked about his band name, which began as a joke. They’re at times bursting with funk and swimming in eccentricities, but each is distinct - an already impressive achievement that becomes doubly so when you realize they were all released in the span of five years. ![]() The thing is, that description doesn’t necessarily work for the seven albums that came before it. Not only is the music on the Australian band’s newest album, Nonagon Infinity, dark and pulsating and foreboding, it’s also, paradoxically, a ton of fun. He’s at a loss for words when asked to describe the music of his band.Īnd you can’t really blame him. Lead singer Stu Mackenzie wouldn’t say any of that, though - he wouldn’t say much at all, actually. It’s a name you won’t soon forget, but also a name that maybe has you squinting your eyes in skepticism, and rightfully so: What could a band with a name like that sound like? A cartoon? The Beatles? A heavy metal house band from a Star Wars cantina? The answer is: all of that, and then some.
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