I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD-Float Along-Fill Your Lungs (2013).

In 2013, KGATLW released a Western narrative record and this record which opens with a 16 minute psychedelic epic called “Head On/Pill.”  It’s got everything, including a sitar.

There’s a cool, simple riff that lends itself to some groovy jamming.  After 3 and a half minutes the song takes off in a rocking/psychedelic avalanche of sounds.  Around five minutes it settles into a two note sing/play along.  By 7 and a half the sitar is back and the two-note melody has expanded somewhat.  By ten minutes its just bass and drums before the band starts to rebuild the song again.  It’s a very cool exploration of a style that the band hadn’t really toyed with before.  And it would really go on to define one aspect of the band (minus the sitar).

The rest of the album is largely shorter tracks.

“I’m Not a Man Unless I Have a Woman” is a weird little nugget with a soul feel and falsetto vocals.  But with sitar and harmonica.

For the first minute or so of “God is Calling Me Back Home” its sounds kind of goofy and lo-fi.  It’s just a guitar and lots of vocals.  But after a minute, it rocks out with full distortion.  It’s a wild ride for a couple of minute before it degenerates into just feedback and noise by the end.

“30 Past 7” is slower with sitar and a soaring psychedelic feel.   While “Let Me Mend the Past” has a classic Motown sound with piano and falsetto vocals from Ambrose.  Keeping with the jumping around, “Mystery Jack” is a short, fuzzy, garage rock song.  Then comes “Pop In My Step,” which was created by guitarist Cook Craig.  It’s a simple poppy song with fuzzy guitars and a trippy synth.  The middle has a very cool riff that separates the parts.

The disc ends with “Float Along – Full Your Lungs” which returns to the psychedelia.  This song is shorter but even wilder with the sitar and trippy sounds. It’s a fantastic bookend to this wild collection of songs.

[READ February 7, 2019] Animus

This is a creepy story set in Japan.

It opens on a police detective discovering that yet another child has gone missing.  That makes 40.  Luckily the press hasn’t gotten word yet so there’s no general sense of panic, just upset parents and frustrated police.

We cut to two kids in a playground.  A boy playing with a soccer and a girl reading.  It gets dark and the kids are still there.  When the boy kicks his soccer ball, another child, a boy in a mask, shows up and kicks it into the sandpit.  The boy yells at the strange kid and goes for his ball.  But when he steps in the sand, it turns to snakes and the boy runs off.  The girl gets angry at the kid in the mask.  She acts very mature with him and she goes for the ball.  But when she walks in the sand, arms reach out and grab her.  She grabs the ball and flees while the kid in the mask laughs.

The next day the kids return to the park to talk to the weirdo in the mask (in the daytime).  He says that nothing that happened was his fault–it was all the park.  The sand pit shows your greatest fear, the swings show you other people’s dreams and the statues of animals are the ears of the area…they hear everything.  Then he reveals that he was taken from this world a long time ago.  He was buried and never found and now he must haunt this area until he is freed.  His name is Toothless.

While this is going on, we see the police inspector walking around and looking at old people who are dressed like children–as in wearing the current clothes of children.  But they are dehydrated and near death.  One of the old men has a toy that we saw a boy in school playing with just the day before.

The children decide to find Toothless’ body.  I assumed that it was in the sandpit since that’s where he is haunting, but we learn a but more about the history of the area.  A killer known as “The Spade ” killed many and buried them.  The police think that he is responsible for Toothless as well, but he wouldn’t confess to that one killing.  Meanwhile, they are concerned that the new missing children are from a copycat.

The Spade is in prison.  How are the kids going to talk to him?  Well, the kids use the park’s magical powers to get inside The Spade’s dreams.  They think they have an answer.

This story was really cool and really creepy with some scary elements and some great use of the supernatural.  It also had a very disturbing ending–a weird twist in which a happy ending happens, but it is immediately undermined by something else entirely.

The drawing style was very cool and the way the playground was used for all of the magical aspects was very clever.