Melbourne-via-Torquay septet King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard have always had a thing for out-of-the-ordinary album titles.
Past examples include I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon and even their most recent LP, April’s endlessly looping Nonagon Infinity. With the announcement of their ninth album, however, it seemed as though the Gizz had truly outdone themselves with the mouthful that is Flying Microtonal Banana (yep, try saying that three times fast).
Still, as Stu Mackenzie – the band’s primary vocalist and one of its three guitarists – attests, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this very unexpected name.
“My friend Zach very generously built a guitar for me,” he says. “We worked together on the design, and he masterminded the whole thing. It was inspired by the Gibson Flying V in terms of its shape, and it was yellow – so, naturally, it earned the nickname of the Flying Banana. Part way through making the guitar, I told Zach that I wanted to put microtones in the frets of the guitar. That involves adding extra frets that aren’t usually there on the board – it’s kind of like accessing secret notes of guitar, the tones in between your regular frets. It’s a concept that I had wanted to look into further for quite a while, and this album seemed like the right place to explore it. So, that’s how the Flying Banana became Flying Microtonal Banana.”
We’ve already had our first taste (pardon the pun) of Banana care of its seven-and-a-half-minute lead single, the hypnotic ‘Rattlesnake’. It’s a song that, while leaning on several of the band’s favourite tropes – the pulsing double drums, the layered vocals, the flange-heavy guitar – also incorporates sounds that are quite literally unconventional, due to finding those in-between notes and implementing them into the structure of the song. According to Mackenzie, the interest stemmed from wanting to learn more instruments (he had famously never played the flute prior to learning it for Dream Balloon) and ending up on the other side of the world – instrumentally, at least.
“I got this baglama, which is a stringed Turkish instrument,” he says. “It’s shaped kind of like a lute, with seven strings and a long, thin neck. It has movable frets, which you can hear if you listen to Turkish folk music. There’s a lot of sounds that can be found in between the notes you’re accustomed to hearing. I came up with the arrangement of the microtones on the Flying Banana based off the baglama. It went from being something that I was just messing around with to something that I was basing an entire album around.”
Flying Microtonal Banana, which is set for release in February, is the first of five – count ’em – albums that King Gizzard plan to release in 2017. Although being rapidly prolific is nothing new – the band has averaged two LPs a year for nearly its entire existence – the prospect of five full-length records in 12 months is unprecedented, even for these guys. They’re already recording – “It’s all kind of going on all at once,” Mackenzie says – and their high-concept plan is in full swing… well, almost.
“At this point, we have a record that we’re recording with Mild High Club,” Mackenzie begins. “That’s going to be a pretty chill, jazzy groove record. We’ve started doing some demos for that, and that’ll probably be the loosest record. We have two records that are kind of linked – one more or less leads on from Nonagon, although it’s a little moodier and isn’t as relentless. The other one is different again – we’re getting into territory that we’ve never even thought of before.”
For a moment, Mackenzie trails off – he’s legitimately forgotten where he’s up to. “We still haven’t decided on what the fifth album is gonna be,” he concludes with a laugh. “We’ve got plenty of time to come up with something.”
Fans will get their first listen to new material from Flying Microtonal Banana – and quite possibly other songs from forthcoming records – at the band’s second annual Gizzfest, which tours the country from this weekend. For the biggest shows they have ever hosted, King Gizzard will play on an extensive and diverse bill celebrating rock, sludge, riffs and garage-dwelling madness from both here and overseas. It’s a huge project – especially in the midst of making five albums – but Mackenzie is unfazed. More than anything, he is overcome with excitement at the prospect of the festival.
“It’s definitely been a gradual process,” he says. “There’s a fair bit of thought that goes into it. Luckily, we were able to put together a lineup of bands that we’ve either toured with or become really good buddies with. We started out by just hitting up our friends, and gradually built it up from there. There’s a lot that’s gone into making it happen – I mean, there’s still stuff we’re finalising now. Still, it’s a really exciting thing for us. We’re really keen to hang out with this particular crew that we’ve assembled.”
Joining Gizzfest will be Perth psych lords Pond – marking the first time they and King Gizz have toured together – as well as sisterly quartet Stonefield, Geelong’s premier Sabbath worshippers Orb, and American bands like White Fence and the aforementioned Mild High Club. “Everyone playing is a mate,” says Mackenzie. “That’s pretty unreal to us.”
[King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizad photo by Jamie Wdziekonski]
Gizzfest 2016 happensTuesday November 29 atBig Top Sydney, Luna Park, and features King Gizzard And The Wizzard Lizard, Pond, White Fence, The Murlocs, Mild High Club and more.Flying Microtonal Banana is out Friday February 24 through Flightless/Remote Control.
