King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Keep It Weird…. Again On ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

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gizzardNo one is questioning that King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are strange. Or that they are an extremely psychedelic, experimental and talented seven-member group. Their past albums alone prove this. The dreamy psychedelic fuzz of Oddments or the heavy-hitting that is supposed to be the “world’s first infinity looping album” are clear examples that the band does not shy from the unusual: and they pull it off with flying colors.

Flying Microtonal Banana is their first experimentation with microtonal tuning. Microtonality is the utilization of intervals smaller than customary semitones and whole-tones. While this tuning system is not seen much in Western music, it is essential to many other pars of the world such as Indonesia, India, and Middle East. Drummer Eric Moore talks about how the band’s dabbling in this area ended up leading to a full blown album, “Earlier this year we started experimenting with a custom microtonal guitar our friend Zak made for Stu. The guitar was modified to play in 24-TET tuning and could only be played with other microtonal instruments. We ended up giving everyone a budget of $200 to buy instruments and turn them microtonal. The record features the modified electric guitars, basses, keyboards and harmonica as well as a Turkish horn called a Zurna.”

There are songs on the album that have a Middle Eastern feel because of this tuning. However, they maintain an air of psychedelia so integral to King Gizzard. “Flying Microtonal Banana,” the last song on the album, really encompasses this. It features this squealing Turkish horn and layers of deep percussive sound. “Sleep Drifter” touches on this exotic sound as well but the lyrics and melody seem to be closest to an older sound of theirs. The familiarity in this pool of unconventionality is much welcomed. “Rattlesnake” is one of the more promising off of the record. It has a subtle use of this microtonality, and sort of works in a modern way. The only issue I find is that it’s terribly repetitive. “Melting” is in a similar vein, but much more playful.

Overall, it really almost works. But the songs all seem to blur together and the words run in streams all over the place. It winds up but leads nowhere. But maybe nowhere is somewhere. Maybe that’s where they wanted to go — some spiraling microtonal world.

 

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