SOUNDTRACK: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD-Murder of the Universe (2017)
Every KGATLW album is different. Including this one. Murder of the Universe is their second album of 2017. It is narrative concept album split into three separate stories, each containing elements of spoken word to carry a narrative. The first two chapters feature Leah Senior’s narration, while NaturalReader’s “UK, Charles” text-to-speech application narrates the final chapter. And it totally rocks. There’s great riff, distorted guitars and harmonicas and lots of whooping vocals.
There are, essentially three stories on this disc. The first chapter, The Tale of the Altered Beast, is about a human who stumbles on a mystical human/beast hybrid. The narration is quite long and deadpan and tells a fairly complex story, which starts:
As soon as the dust settles, you can see
A new world in place of where the old one had been
Your skin is crawling with dry, crusted mud
And your naked feet are wet in a pool of blood
And the whistle of the wind in your ears is so loud
That your memories have blown up in a mushroom cloud
And as your eyes accommodate
There appears by the meadow
A brute like a bear with a long, dark shadow
And you violently shake over what you have seen
As you remember the tale of the Altered Beast
Nearly each of the nine tracks has narration interspersed with singing. There’s a lot of repeated sections, but more as a thematic choice rather than as repetition. The titles of the songs are indicative of this: Altered Beast I, II, III and IV and Alter Me I, II and III. But those parts are not simply repeats. Rather, they allude to each other with repeated riffs and words. But even though parts are repeated there are plenty of original riffs throughout.
The third part of “Alter Me” has a cool 80’s sci-fi keyboard sound, which works perfectly before the noisy harmonica returns.
The “Altered Beast” story is the longest part of the story at 19 minutes. And the final “Altered Beast” part has a very nifty fast section that I believe is in 11/4.
The last track “Life/Death” is very different–keyboard-fueled and almost poppy sounding, this final minute of the story is not a happy one.
The second chapter, The Lord of Lightning vs. Balrog, focuses on a battle between the forces of light of darkness. And the segue between the two, called “Some Context” references “People-Vultures” from Nonagon Infinity.
It opens with guitarist Joey Walker’s Mongolian throat singing behind the narration on some of the tracks. This adds an extra sense of ominousness to the story.
So the main story is a battle between The Lord of Lightning and Balrog and they each get a song:
When the songs proper start, “The Lord of Lightning’s” theme is somewhat proggy with all kinds of ostinato (to use a term form the narration). In addition to keyboard parts and some heavy rocking parts, there’s a callback to the chorus of “Nonagon Infinity.” The music for this chapter is very complicated with fits and starts and various drum lines.
While the interstitials in the first chapter were done with an interesting guitar riff, the interstitials in this part come with a fast rumbling bass line. “Balrog” has a lot of chanting befits a KGATLW song.
The war comes to a head in the Floating Fire which has more throat singing and a martial beat and its aftermath “The Acrid Corpse” … but which one is the corpse?
The third and final chapter, Han-Tyumi & The Murder of the Universe, is about a cyborg in a digital world who gains consciousness and decides to strive only for what a cyborg cannot do: vomit and die. How very King Gizzard. There’s a lot about vomit in this song. Maybe it was just fun hearing the robotic voice say vomit?
He decides to create a creature dubbed the “Soy-Protein Munt Machine” whose only purpose is to vomit. When the creature rejects his love, Han-Tyumi decides to merge with the machine, which causes it to lose control. This machine explodes and infinitely expels vomit, which eventually engulfs the entire universe: and so the universe is murdered.
It opens with keyboard swirls, like the opening credits a sci-fi soap opera
This is a much heavier bunch of songs, like the thumping (with extra drums) on “Digital Black.” Over a futuristic keyboard section Han-Tyumi recites his problem:
I am bereft of two human things
Two things that a cyborg can never do
Two things that I strive for
Two things between myself and mankind
Death
And
To vomit
This story is bonkers. But it totally rocks and it leads to the really catchy song (which they played live when I saw them called, what else, “Vomit Coffin.” The final song is a tour de force of instrumental power while HanTyumi talks of vomiting and getting bigger and bigger until he destroys the universe. Gross and hilarious and totally rocking. Destroying the Universe never sounded so good.
[READ: February 28, 2019] Castle in the Stars 2
This gorgeous graphic novel was originally published in French and was translated by Anne and Owen Smith.
Part two continues with the beautiful look of his book. I am really fascinated at the way these characters can look at time cartoonish and at times almost photo-realistic (in soft focus).
At the end of the last book our team escaped from certain danger by jumping aboard an aethership. The crew is Seraphin (whose mother has been lost in the aether when she took a ship there and never returned), Seraphim’s father as well as Seraphim’s friend Sophie (a girl!) and her half-brother Hans (the very cartoony looking character). They are joined by King Ludwig whom we are told at the begiinning of the story just wanted to leave everything behind. (more…)
Like this:
Like Loading...
Read Full Post »
Ten years ago we saw Barenaked Ladies at New Jersey Festival of Ballooning and it was pretty cool. Hearing them sing Light Up My Room as the balloons lifted off was a cool moment to be sure.
