King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have detailed their new album The Silver Cord, their second album of 2023, which finds them embracing synthesizers and electronic music. “We come at electronic music from an amateur angle,” says frontman Stu Mackenzie. “I play the Juno synthesizer like a guitar, I don’t really know how to play it. But I wanted to be at peace with being the rock band pretending to know how to use modular synthesizers. We’re in uncharted waters, we’re further out to sea, but leaning into it, and we got to a spot where we were really happy with what came out.”
The idea for the album came from the acquisition of a 1980’s Simmons electronic drum kit. “The Simmons kit is really sick, actually,” says Mackenzie. “It has this little ‘electronic’ brain all the drum-pads plug into, and while the sounds it can make are pretty rudimentary, we soon decided we wanted to commit to it as the drum sound for this next record. We set Cavs’ Simmons kit up in the centre of the room, and then dragged every synth we had in the practice space or lying about our houses into the studio, and plugged everything in. It was chaotic. It was probably the coolest our studio has ever looked, to be honest.”
The Silver Cord is out October 27 on KGLW and is available in two forms: a single-disc standard version or the double-LP Extended Version that stretches its seven songs into much longer, free-flowing beasts. “The first version’s really condensed, trimming all the fat,” says Mackenzie. “And on the second version, that first song, ‘Theia’, is 20 minutes long. It’s the ‘everything’ version – those seven songs you’ve already heard on the first version, but with a whole lot of other shit we record while making it. It’s for the Gizz-heads. I love Donna Summer’s records with Giorgio Moroder, and I’d never listen to the short versions now – I’m one of those people who wants to hear the whole thing. We’re testing the boundaries of people’s attention spans when it comes to listening to music, perhaps – but I’m heavily interested in destroying such concepts.”
The band have shared the first three songs — “Theia,” “The Silver Cord,” and “Set” — which they’ve made into one 12-minute epic video. Watch that below.
King Gizzard will be back in the States in 2024 for a few special three-hour marathon shows, including two nights at NYC’s Forest Hills Stadium on August 16 & 17.
THE SILVER CORD
1. Theia
2. The Silver Cord
3. Set
4. Chang’e
5. Gilgamesh
6. Swan Song
7. Extinction
KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD – 2024 TOUR DATES
Wed. May 22, 2024 – Hamburg, Germany @ Stadtpark Open Air – MARATHON SHOW
Sat. May 25, 2024 – London, UK @ Wide Awake Festival – HEADLINE SET
Fri. Aug. 16, 2024 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium – MARATHON SHOW
Sat. Aug. 17, 2024 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium – MARATHON SHOW
Sun. Sept. 1, 2024 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island – MARATHON SHOW, SOLD OUT
Sat. Sept. 14, 2024 – Quincy, WA @ The Gorge Amphitheatre – MARATHON SHOW
Fri. Nov. 15, 2024 – Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance Amphitheater – MARATHON SHOW
