King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are arguably one of the most prolific bands on the Australian music scene, and it appears that even a pandemic-inspired lockdown won’t stop them from creating.
While 2020 serves as the 10th anniversary for Melbourne’s own King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, the global presence of COVID-19 means that the chances of fans seeing the collective live is immensely slim. However, in true fashion, they’re planning to turn a year of reduced activity into another one for the books.
Though January of this year saw them release three live records to raise funds for Australian bushfire relief charities, their immediate plans were halted following the outbreak of COVID-19. As a result, global touring plans and the release of their Chunky Shrapnel concert film have subsequently been delayed.
However, ahead of a livestream premiere of the film (and an upcoming physical release), King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard took to Reddit recently where frontman Stu Mackenzie answered a number of questions as part of an Ask Me Anything session.
While fans professed their love of the group, Mackenzie revealed that despite current lockdowns, the band are still hard at working on a number of different projects. While he noted they’ve been “working on some electronic-ish stuff”, Mackenzie also claimed he was “excited” about a few other things the group have been working towards.
“Were [sic] working on a few diff projects atm and not sure which will end up coming out next,” Mackenzie explained, before indicating that 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana may soon receive a companion piece
“Some of it is pretty chill, some of it is kinda jazzy, some of it is microtonal. Also messing around with some more polymetric type stuff.”
At this stage, it’s not known whether or not any of this material will appear on the record that Chunky Shrapnel director John Angus Stewart recently told NME they’re currently working on.
The AMA’s discussion also touched upon the group’s archive of live recordings, with one fan receiving a positive response to the notion of launching a “fan-established live recording archive website”.
However, Mackenzie also noted that the band’s own recording habits might see a number of live gigs from the last year officially released in the near future, with the band reportedly having “recorded almost every show in 2019”, and previously entertaining the notion of sharing these performances.
Similarly, early 2020 saw Mackenzie, Joey Walker, and Michael Cavanagh team up with Leak Senior to create a new soundtrack for the film Suspiria as part of the Hear My Eyes series of events. During the Reddit appearance, Mackenzie claimed that “if not for COVID19 I reckon we’d be working on that Suspiria recording now,” and noted that “it’ll be under the moniker Professor Of The Occult.”
As it stands currently, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are set to release the Chunky Shrapnel live album – which mainly consists of tracks from their 2019 trek to Europe – on April 24th, while a wider release of the accompanying concert film is yet to be announced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtDOSIIDGPM
