- Best garage rock: "Flight B741" by King Gizzard
What happens when you mix ZZ Top, the Beatles, and eight pigs on an airplane? You get an album like "Flight b741" by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. It's their 26th album, with the six Melbourne-based musicians averaging nearly two albums per year over almost 15 years, satisfying fans and leaving room for creative experiments.
"Our last albums were deep, expansive, and somewhat intellectual," says King Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie, spanning genres from trash metal and digital synth soundscapes to Greek musical modes. With "Flight b741", the band ventures into the terrain of blues, country, and psychedelic rock.
Between worn-out sofas and cigarette smoke
The ten tracks sound like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard recorded them during an euphoric jam session in a rehearsal room filled with worn-out sofas and cigarette smoke. Classic blues guitar alternates with psychedelic choruses and primal harmonica wails. A track like "Daily Blues" can even stretch to a proud 7.42 minutes.
"It's like a really fun weekend with your mates, you know?" says Mackenzie, summing it up perfectly. Indeed, "Flight b741" was created in just two weeks at the band's studio.
Passing around a microphone
Even if garage sound might seem like an easy task at first, capturing it professionally requires creativity. Mackenzie reveals, "We didn't use any fancy tube amps, just cheap little transistor amps cranked up to 11 and really loud." They also employed a detuned piano and a used National KX-88, the garage rock beat organ of the 60s and 70s.
To achieve the perfect garage rock mix, the musicians simply passed around the microphone during recording. For the background choruses, all six gathered around the recording device. "We wanted as many lead singers as possible," says Mackenzie. "Everyone brought songs and ideas."
The result is a wild ride, hinted at in song titles like "Rats in the Sky", "Le Risque", and "Hog Calling Contest". King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard seem to have won the "Pig Calling Contest", with eight pigs gathered on a wooden airplane on the album cover. As the song text from "Le Risque" puts it: "Let's ride!"
The creative process of "Flight b741" was reminiscent of a lively house party, with band members taking turns to sing into a single microphone, creating a collective sound that embodies the spirit of garage rock. This unconventional approach, along with the use of affordable equipment like transistor amps and a vintage organ, results in an album that feels like an otherworldly, spirited gathering.
