Melbourne collective King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are set to send their dedicated fans into a buying frenzy, announcing a number of environmentally-friendly reissues of some of their classic records.
Announced by Heavenly Recordings, the series is set to see a total of ten records by the group being reissued on June 20th (the original date the postponed Record Store Day was set to take place on) in partnership with the #loverecordstores initiative.
Sold via record stores across the UK, King Gizzard’s ‘Rancid Rainwater Eco Mix’ editions see the group’s titles being pressed onto “eco-wax” (that is, from randomly leftover pellets which provide a “murky pond water” colour), with shrink-wrap being replaced by a recycled brown paper bag, with record details printed onto a biodegradable sticker.
“In 2020, plastic is in our oceans, it’s in our soils, it’s in our bodies,” explained King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard frontman Stu Mackenzie.
“The irony of making music that will be pressed on a giant plastic disc is not lost on me. It is a privilege and a responsibility to own this record or any other. Be thoughtful and be kind to Mother Nature. We need her.”
🦎 Heavenly Releases for @LoveRecsStores event on June 20th! Including @kinggizzard @weareunloved @hihatchie and @CherryGhostband. All the details can news can be found here 👉 https://t.co/GAAwUqSqhD 🦎 pic.twitter.com/1IMfrT7uBl
— Heavenly Recordings (@heavenlyrecs) June 9, 2020
Notably, this isn’t the first time that the band have toyed with the idea of embarking on such an environmentally-conscious way of releasing music, querying via Twitter back in April if “anyone [had] ever made a biodegradable ‘vinyl’ record?”
The reissue series will collect all of the records released by the band on the Heavenly Records label between 2014 and 2017, including 2014’s I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, 2015’s Quarters! and Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, 2016’s Nonagon Infinity, 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, Murder of the Universe, Sketches of Brunswick East, Polygondwanaland, and Gumboot Soup, and the 12″ single-sided picture disc of “Head On/Pill“, originally issued as a Record Store Day exclusive in 2014.
It’s not all King Gizzard releases being unleashed on the day though, with a single from Hatchie and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and records from Unloved and Cherry Ghost also appearing on June 20th.
In related news, Record Store Day’s originally-postponed plans of taking place on June 20th have since been pushed back further, with a trio of monthly events now set to take place between August and October.
