King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard on quitting Spotify, orchestras, raves, and world domination

Is there an Australian band more insanely prolific than King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard?

Since their 2011 debut, the Melbourne six-piece have pumped out new records at an alarming rate, each release tinkering with new genres and sounds with the same deranged intensity as their feted live show.

From high-octane psych rock and jazzy noodling to story-driven doom metal and explorations into micro-tonal tuning. And that's just the five albums they released in 2017, a feat they repeated in 2022.

Pin-balling from a spoken-word Spaghetti Western to climate-fiction power metal, boogie rock, and beyond, absorbing their 27-album discography is a legitimate marathon. Trust us!

This wild pacing and unpredictability gleefully defy all conventional industry wisdom, but the group's risk-taking has been rewarded with a cult following of Grateful Dead-level proportions.

The most dedicated Gizzheads commit themselves to the band's relentless touring schedule, taping marathon shows and streaming them online.

They pore over set list minutiae, and share bootlegs and homemade merchandise — all of which King Gizzard has actively supported since encouraging fans to press and sell their own versions of twelfth album Polygondwanaland.

"For us it was always about being in front of people," says singer, guitarist and band ringleader Stu Mackenzie.

"That's how it always happened for us. And I think we try to stick to that philosophy, but I do recognise that we have been lucky enough to build up a fan base of people who follow our lead on all the crazy adventures we take them on."

So, after 27 albums, 76 bootlegs, and countless sold out shows, what's next?

"Techno," Mackenzie declares with a smirk.

After flirting with synths and sequencers on Butterfly 3000 (2021, LP#18) and The Silver Cord (2023, LP#25 — this will be on the test), King Gizz have developed their electronic side touring a series of rave shows.

His gateway was the Eurorack modular synthesiser format which resembles an antique telephone switchboard.

"I'd describe it as synthesiser guts. Instead of the synthesiser being on the inside and you play the keys and knobs, the patch cables and everything are on the outside," he says.

It is a thoroughly nerdy, hands-on process that is "so deeply up my alley," Mackenzie chuckles. "I know so much about control voltage now."

The fixation has inducted a seventh member, Nathan, the nickname for the table-top pyramid of tangled cables, keys and mics that was wheeled centre stage for King Gizzard's first rave show on Australian soil — a free performance hosted at Melbourne's Fed Square last month.

"It's usually something that's done by one person. The way that we are all musically talking to each other [with this gear] is really hard to pull off because none of it is designed to do any of this stuff," Mackenzie says.

In lesser hands it'd be an indulgent mess. But in the court of the Gizzard King embracing the chaos isn't just custom, it's proof of their mastery.

Searching for the same thing

Like Mackenzie, each band member has their own musical interests and projects.

Harmonica-toting singer and sometimes rapper Ambrose Kenny-Smith recently toured a collaborative album with Jay "Gum" Watson, also of Tame Impala and Pond.

Kenny-Smith also fronts The Murlocs alongside guitarist Cook Craig, who has his own solo project, Pipe-eye.

Titanic drummer Michael Cavanagh releases music under his nickname, CAVS. 

Bassist Lucas Harwood plays in psych-pop quartet Heavy Moss, and singer-guitarist Joey Walker — the biggest cheerleader for King Gizz's techno pivot — makes electronic music as Bullant.

King Gizz's restless genre-hopping is driven by what simultaneously motivates all six members.

"Something where we can all fire on all cylinders and be inspired together. To be looking in the same direction at the same time. At the moment it's this thing," Mackenzie says.

Showcasing Nathan on the next album is a logical step, but in the Gizz tradition of opting to zig when fans expect them to zag, that might not be the case.

In October 2024 the group took their improvised modular set-up to the studio "and it didn't work that well," Mackenzie concedes.

"We ended up with 57 hours of recording. [But] I don't want to edit that," he chuckles. "That's actually really boring. It'll take the amount of time it would take us to make a new record to just edit this stuff," he says.

Enter the orchestra

King Gizzard return to Australian shores this December for nine east coast shows playing rock one night, with a 29-piece symphony orchestra the next, showcasing their new orchestral album Phantom Island.

Going symphonic wasn't on the group's bucket list, "it was just something that in the most beautiful way serendipitously happened".

Namely, it was a backstage meeting with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that blossomed into an opportunity to play a US show with an orchestra.

The band enlisted British conductor Chad Kelly to write charts, then arrange unfinished material written alongside Flight b741 (LP #26).

"We thought, 'Well, if we're going to do one show, we may as well do a tour. And if we're going to do a tour, we may as well make a new album'," Mackenzie says.

Phantom Island contains moments unlike any in the band's far-reaching catalogue, with punchy brass, lush flutes and strings augmenting the band's bluesy twang and Southern-fried psychedelia.

The songwriting has evolved alongside the sonics, revealing a sense of humanity from a group famous for their rock fantasies, chanting about rattlesnakes, dragons, and balrogs over gnarly riffs.

"In a lot of ways it's a reaction to the kind of band we have become live," Mackenzie says.

"We'd kind of experimented with making all sorts of different sounds. But we just wanted to write songs in the old-fashioned sense. I think that naturally led to a more vulnerable sort of songwriting."

On Spacesick, Mackenzie uses an interstellar trip as a metaphor for the isolating orbit of months spent on the road, longing for the grounding of domestic life with his wife and kids.

"How did the little ones sleep? Did you make it to the zoo?," he sings. "Your brother told me they cried a lot, when they saw a guy who looked like their pop."

"We all had a lot of life things happening," the 35-year-old reflects. "A lot of kids — either just been born or about to be — around that time. 

"Just being away, on tour and navigating this period of life that we're in together was definitely central to the whole thing."

Walker and Kenny-Smith offer similar tender songs reflecting on habitually leaving their families and friends to meet the demands of their obsessive fanbase, self-made as they are.

"We learned some lessons early on, especially in the earlier days of touring where we were going to Europe, the States, Europe, the States — five, six times a year."

These days they've "figured out what feels healthy and what doesn't. I would like to think we check ourselves. But I also genuinely really, really love it," he says.

"The opportunity to still be on the horse after all these years — I try and not take it for granted."

Ditching Spotify

In July, a month after Phantom Island's release, King Gizz made a move more startling than going symphonic — removing all its music from Spotify.

The departure was in response to Spotify co-founder and executive chairman Daniel Ek's venture capital firm, Prima Materia, investing 600 million euro ($1.06 billion) in Helsing, a German defence company specialising in AI military tech.

The news sparked backlash and a wave of users and artists quitting Spotify, including fellow Australian artists David Bridie and folk artist Leah Senior.

Senior, a long-time friend and collaborator of Mackenzie's, was the catalyst for King Gizzard's own exit from the world's biggest music streaming platform.

Rather than being a political statement it was a personal, ethical call.

"I don't want to soapbox or tell other people what to do. It just felt like the right thing for us … and it'd be cool if other people left, but I get it," Mackenzie says.

"This goes without saying — you have to really believe in what you do.

Shortly after leaving Spotify, King Gizzard made their entire catalogue available through online music distributor Bandcamp with a "name your price" model.

Just days later, all 27 of their albums appeared on the platform's best sellers list. 

Four months on, those records — along with several of the group's live albums — still populate Bandcamp's pointy end.

For Mackenzie and co. it was about making their music accessible and rewarding a community they're deeply grateful for.

"I truly feel like we can do whatever we want. For the most part we are doing it to impress each other as a band," he says.

At the heart of it all, behind the ridiculous name and intimidating discography, "that is the real driving force," Mackenzie concludes.

"We are here because we like making music with each other. That's the thing that I have found over the years to be a more stable source of inspiration than anything external.

"There's actually a zen thing to that — being motivated from within is actually a better way to be motivated than from without."

Phantom Island is out now. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's play the following dates:

Tuesday December 2 — Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Wednesday December 3 — Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Thursday December 4 — Enmore Theatre, Sydney with Party Dozen and Destrends

Friday December 5 — Enmore Theatre, Sydney with Party Dozen and Destrends

Sunday December 7 — Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane with Party Dozen

Tuesday December 9 — The Princess Theatre, Brisbane with Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Wednesday December 10 — The Princess Theatre, Brisbane with Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Friday December 12 — Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne with Orchestra Victoria and Folk Bitch Trio

Saturday December 13 — Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne with Barkaa