King Gizzard play 3-hour Marathon Set at the Gorge
Even if you don’t know them, you probably know of them. Aussie multi-instrumentalists, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, brought us to the Gorge for a three-hour marathon show. The outdoor natural amphitheater was a beautiful choice for such an iconic performance. King Gizz have a cult following similar to the Grateful Dead, except they’re actually good… The group has a vast body of work to pull this set off gathering tunes from 27 and counting EPs with 5 of those released in one year. That’s an extraterrestrial type of force that explores and fuses thrash metal, prog rock, jazz, electronic, blues, and psych pop. King Gizzard transcends reality to “The Gizzverse“, which I interpret to be an alternate universe where apocalyptic events are reflected in each of their records. The music alone is like a glitch in the matrix that’s not confined by any lines we draw with genre. It almost couldn’t be any less than three hours to accommodate their drops since they were last on the road.
The venue was massive, and the crowd was diverse with many types of people. The set list kicked off with lead singer Stu Mackenzie exploding into “Rattlesnake“, the first song off the 2017 EP, Flying Microtonal Banana. Here some of their key tone signatures are born, they decorate all of the King Gizz albums to come after. The set waded through their earlier dark and medieval microtonal guitars. Mind you, microtonal instruments are not conventionally easy instruments to play. Themes are constant and while they are experimental with their taste and concept, the execution is discriminate and measured. The setlist featured certain groups of songs that have no delay between them, running into the next as a continuation of the previous (just like the records). King Gizz stand out when it comes to their creative uses of music theory, they create the bones for something and reference it in another track, or they’ll play it backwards or chop and screw it with another element.
The highlight was how they switched into an EDM set to recreate their intricate mixes like “The Silver Cord, extended mix” which builds brain soothing tension that releases into an emotional ending that somehow paints a picture of a consciousness in the present recalling before life or in the womb. Meanwhile their drummer Michael Cavanagh is setting the pace live while the rest of them hunch over their controllers. Watching him play drum and bass style breakbeats, over synth-electronica-house so crisply was deeply satisfying. There’s something to be said for crafting your own sample tracks just to remix on the B side.
Throughout the show they laugh and joke with one another, they radiate positivity that permeates through the atmosphere. They engage us in a hog calling contest, one of them capsizes from a raft that’s thrown on top of the crowd. A three-hour marathon set isn’t enough to truly paint how colorful their discography is, but this set gave us a taste of what they may be like. Towards the end they had to stop the show a few times due to barricades not holding up the front and finished heavy with “Motor Spirit“. Experiencing King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard was the highlight of the weekend!
Notable tracks: Le Risque, The Great Chain of Being, Dragon, I’m in your Mind Fuzz, Iron Lung, Red Smoke, This Thing, People Vultures, The Silver Cord, SET
Photos: Eric Tra @erictra
