You've got to tune to KEXP. We are listener-powered radio at 90.3 FM here in Seattle, streaming around the world at kexp.org. And from halfway around the world, it's our great friends King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard live here in the KEXP studios. Welcome. It's King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard live here in the KEXP studios. Once the train leaves the station, you better hold on tight. They're playing tonight at Show Buck Soto here in Seattle.
Nicely done. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard live here in the KEXP studios. Boy, it is always so fun to see you perform live. And you've been playing a bunch of shows here on the West Coast. I follow you online and you had a ton of shows. over in Europe and people are going nuts. How's it been? Wow, it just looks like so much fun. It's been fun. It's been a fun kind of year so far. We've just been trying to play a million shows this year.
Yeah, I don't know. Last year we kind of record a lot. We did have shows last year as well, but this year it's kind of like, let's just try and play as much as we can, which is a good feeling. It's been fun. You did still play a lot last year, and as many people know, you made what...
seemed maybe at the time to be an offhand comment that you were going to put five records out last year. And you did it right under the wire at the end of the year. That's a lot of great music. And man, job well done. And when I'm reading some of the interviews about it, It really gave me an interesting insight. You take the listener on so many journeys through your music, lots of lyrical journeys as well, and all kinds of different music on each album. And it was curious to read about...
how that came together, I kind of thought in a linear fashion, but that's not at all how it worked. You really have discrete ideas for each record. Yeah, I think it originally started with four, not five, which is kind of funny. We had four fairly distinct ideas kind of leading into the year last year. And there was a couple of songs that we were playing live even in 2016.
this stuff that kind of came straight from Nonagon Infinity, sort of like the murder of the universe kind of thing, a little bit of Lord of Lightning and those kind of songs sort of came straight out of Nonagon Infinity and that sort of felt like the next most kind of absurd.
extreme version of that record and then Crumbling Castle was sort of in a way related to that as well but we're kind of messing around with this polymetric kind of like thing as well and that sort of felt like its own its own idea And then we were messing around with these microtonal guitars as well and there was one or two of those songs kind of came, you know, about pretty early on and I think we were playing Rattlesnake towards the end of 2016 as well.
And we'd been touring with Mild High Club all throughout 2015 and 16, I think, from memory. So we had this idea to make a record with them. So those four records... the first four records yeah really had just a little bit of an idea for each record um before we started the year and then it's like okay well instead of kind of building a record you know out of these kind of like
individual songs. These songs feel too disjointed. They feel like they don't belong together. Let's separate them and then build a record around these individual songs and kind of keep. you know, make some siblings for them or something. And then the fifth one, Gumboot Soup, was sort of like, I think early on in the year, it sort of, it started to be apparent that there were songs that...
maybe didn't fit on any of the records. And there was also some microtonal stuff that, because we sort of made that, we finished that record first at least, but there's a few songs from that record that Greenhouse and All Is Known that felt like they... still needed some love and it felt like okay well let's do a fifth record with kind of like all this other stuff that still needs love but hasn't been given it yet.
In and amongst all these creative ideas within your music, as a band and the way you move forward, the way you do business is also just very creative. It's a real family and friend affair. And you took us on a journey on Paliwong, Ghana land, Paliwong. on gun land. the first part of that set there and that was a real experiment you release that for free a lot of people do that online digitally but you took it like 15 steps farther can you talk about the thought behind that and
how you thought that would work out and what really happened? I think as the year sort of panned out, you know, we put that record out in November and it was the fourth record. And by the time we kind of... came to, you know, finishing this record, it started feeling like, I don't know, I started getting this guilty feeling of constantly trying to sell stuff. It's like, hey, here's another record. It's 30 bucks. You know, that kind of...
That sort of felt, started feeling weird to me. So it was like, okay, well, let's make one of these last couple of records free. And it's really free. Like, you know, it's as free as we can make it. It's not just like a digital download. It's like we put all this love into it and then it's free. It's like a gift. It's a present. It's like thank you. We're feeling, you know, overwhelmed by just playing.
shows to people and it's still just like a spin out to be able to have people come to our shows and stuff. So it felt like that record was right for that too because...
That record felt like it was the most considered to me. It was the one where we probably thought about each individual element, each sound and... yeah all the kind of like interconnecting layers of the music more than any other record that we've ever made before um it was less haphazard let's just go in guns blaring let's go sort of thing and that one was like Considered and it felt like it was important to make the free album a considered album.
And as you said, you didn't just make it available for a digital download, but you really gave it to your fans. You told them to press it and do whatever they wanted with it. And you even said, this is not our record. This is your record. And what did some people do with it?
Yeah, I mean, it was just as much of an experiment for us. You know, we were kind of curious to see what would happen. We were kind of interested and we were sort of... giggling about it as well well like this is pretty weird thing to do i don't know what's gonna happen um but there's been a lot of like there's been i don't know there might be eric would probably have more of an idea how many versions
Yeah, there's 180 versions or so, apparently. Which is cool. We've got quite a few, like, a lot of nice people have handed us records and said, you know, here, we press this. It's like... Crazy. It's overwhelming. It's really cool. You have your own label, Flightless Records, and of course you care about the quality of the sound of your record. Is it difficult to press good quality vinyl? I know it's expensive.
There are quite a few things that can go wrong. It was sort of important to us to make sure we had... all the parts that people would need in terms of making the audio good or sound quality nice. So we made sure we did a digital master and a vinyl master for people to use.
which I think people did, or people took things into their own hands and did sort of like crazy experimental stuff, which is cool as well. Yeah, we sort of just said, go nuts, like here's everything you're going to need, you know. have fun with it um jason who's a man who does kind of like all of our work and stuff he did a front cover and we just kind of
said, you know, you can, for the rest of the art, the back cover, if you do a gatefold in a sleeve, vinyl colours, labels, all that stuff, you can kind of do whatever you like. So that was kind of interesting as well, to see what people have done. Yeah, it's been really interesting. It's been cool, yeah. It's taken your labor of love and made it theirs as well.
I want to talk about GizFest. We're such big fans of yours here, and we all say, we're going to go to GizFest, we're going to go to GizFest. And I did actually go. You did go. And it was incredible. And as I said, people that know a little bit about the band know what... Love.
Project that it is. I mean you started playing together as kids many of you and you run the label yourselves You you have flightless records and that's where you make a lot of the records and where you practice and you invite people in to play shows there, which I also witnessed, but actually being at Gives Fest and feeling it and seeing it in person just
really gives you a sense of something you can't even imagine like you've become incredibly popular as a band and I think there were like 10,000 people there in Melbourne when I went and you could sell out that show you need to make a living there's a lot of you in this band Lucas congratulations
You know, you just had a baby. Luke just had a baby. Congratulations. People you need to feed. You could sell out those shows, and yet you bring... all these artists along with you you curate this festival lovingly and in fact in melbourne you had all these little side stages there's it is just made with love and i just uh i guess i've done all the talking here i've explained it but
You know, how did that start for you? I mean, some of these bands came from outside Australia and you took them on the full tour with you. You know, that cut into what you could make and... I mean... Thinking back to the genesis of Gears Fest, you know, four years ago or so now, it was just a show. We just did a show and we kind of booked a show and then invited like...
15 bands to play. And I think it just, it wasn't really a festival. It was like inside a venue and just with bands playing all day. And I think it's sort of just naturally. kind of evolved from there. But it's been funny. To a large extent, it's like Eric's kind of baby. Eric spends a lot of time kind of working on this and thinking about this stuff. But, yeah, it's always really nice to be able to, you know, sort of bring out and also hang out with, like, the bands like Luz and Kikagaku Moyo.
We played last year in the Maud High Club and a bunch of other bands from Australia and everything. It's wonderful to give those bands a platform, too. And I discovered, partly through Murder of the Universe, but also at the festival, Leah Sr., which is someone that I... didn't know about and thought was amazing. So it's wonderful that you take these bands with you and give them a platform as well. Very talented young woman, Leah.
Well, now that you have five records under your belt, I know you're going to tour a lot this year, but any exciting things going on? You have a little bit more time. If you're not going to put out five records, you're probably not going to say that again. Yeah, I don't think I'll say that again. We've been kind of jamming on a couple of new ideas, but mostly we're just kind of focusing on playing shows and just sort of...
Just kind of changing gear a little bit, which is a nice feeling. Just sort of focus on just playing and getting to some places we haven't been before and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it's a nice...
I mean, we're still super busy, just in a different way. Well, hopefully you're busy selling all those records, too, that you made. They're wonderful. If you don't have them, check them out. King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard. Thank you so much, always, for making time for KEXP. Of course. Thanks for having us. Always a pleasure. Tonight they're playing at Showbox Soto here in Seattle, and you've got it tuned to KEXP, where the music matters.