King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard announce new album L.G., their third in an “exploration of microtonal tunings”

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have announced the release of their 17th (!) studio album, L.W., which the band describes as the third volume (following last year’s K.G. and 2017's Flying Microtonal Banana) in an exploration of microtonal tunings.

You can listen to the first single, Pleura, above, featuring a video that was filmed “last night,” at the band's studio.

According to the band, L.W. serves as a companion piece to K.G. and a stand-alone work in its own right. The record features 19 songs recorded back to back.

“For me personally, making a record is always a certain percentage of fun and a small percentage of agonizing over it too,” said frontman Stu Mackenzie.

“But there’s always a wild alchemy going into it. Like, you don’t really know what you’re doing, you’re just kind of throwing all of your emotional energy into nothing, which becomes… something?”

Continuing their microtonal explorations, the record shows a search for “the notes between the notes” via modified instruments and the middle eastern tunings usually found on the bağlama, a Turkish stringed instrument.

“We wanted to make new music that was somehow more colorful this time around, and which maybe reflected the many new things that we have learned along the way,” Mackenzie said. 

“After recording Flying Microtonal Banana the songs expanded when we played them live, so we felt ready to tackle the microtonal landscape again. Making these two new records was not expected, but because they were recorded in a way that was new to us – not being in the room at the same time – there was a feeling of almost being over-prepared, which is definitely not normal for us. Whatever normal is.”

You can preorder L.W. here, and for more King Gizzard, check out Total Guitar's list of their 10 best songs... so far.