KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD - Changes LP

Very limited "Tango Edition" Aust Indies exclusive white vinyl. SOLD OUT.

Recycled black wax also available.

For half a decade, the sextet has been haunted by one elusive conceptual project that had bested their every attempt. They first conceived the album in 2017. Within a mere 12 months, they recorded and released 5 albums of new material, but the band had intended to see out the year with a different album. That album was called Changes, and it’s finally arriving now.

“I think of Changes as a song-cycle,” says Stu Mackenzie. “Every song is built around this one chord progression – every track is like a variation on a theme. But I don’t know if we had the musical vocabulary yet to complete the idea at that time. We recorded some of it then, including the version of 'Exploding Suns' that’s on the finished album. But when the sessions were over, it just never felt done. It was like this idea that was in our heads, but we just couldn’t reach. We just didn’t know yet how to do what we wanted to do.”

The group abandoned Changes and were then quickly ensnared by about 8 other outlandish ideas that sent them in infinite new directions.

“It’s not necessarily our most complex record, but every little piece and each sound you hear has been thought about a lot”

Indeed, the album has gestated over a fitfully inventive five years. Originally imagined as the group’s fifth album of 2017, it has ended up being the fifth album King Gizzard will release in 2022. Coincidences like this, Mackenzie says, wake up the latent numerologist within him. But the album has taught him that projects operate to their own schedules and are ready when they’re ready.

Soaked in the warm sonics of 70s R’n’B and guided by simple chord changes that contain multitudes and rounding out another remarkable year for the group, Changes is a luminous, soft-pop marvel.