[UPDATE 6/11/21]: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have released their 18th studio album, Butterfly 3000, after a month promoting its arrival under a veil of secrecy.

The ten-song set marks yet another stylistic shift for the shape-shifting Australian psych-rockers. Derived from arpeggiated loops composed on modular synthesizers, the sounds were fashioned into optimistic “dream-pop” songs by the sextet.

While Butterfly 3000 sounds like nothing King Gizzard has released before, it remains unmistakably their own—a testament to the limitless imagination and fluidity of this unicorn band.

While Butterfly 3000‘s sound is a far cry from the band’s offerings on 2020’s K.G. and its early-2021 follow-up, L.W., it was created in a similar, remote fashion. Members of the band recorded their respective parts from their own homes, their studio and rehearsal space remaining out of bounds.

Singer/multi-instrumentalist Stu Mackenzie describes the process of making the album as a “group challenge.” In addition to writing this new material on unfamiliar equipment, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard committed to writing each of the songs in a major key, forcing them toward sunnier sonics. “We were trying to make upbeat dance music, in our own way, and we’d never gone there before,” says Mackenzie.

Butterfly 3000 also abandoned another old Gizzard method, what Mackenzie describes as “throwing a lot of shit at the wall and finding that magic take, or building something with 20 tracks of guitar overdub.” Instead, the new album was a process of refinement, paring tracks back to their elements and pushing the melodies to the foreground.

The result, Mackenzie says, is “weird, odd, off-kilter polymetric arpeggios in strange time signatures, but with proper grooves you can stomp along to. At heart it’s avant garde, but a six-year-old could enjoy it.”

The album’s title is, like many Gizzard albums before it, the work of longtime collaborator Jason Galea, who has composed for Butterfly 3000 a detailed album sleeve that draws inspiration from the Cross-eyed Autostereogram poster phenomena of the ’90s. It’s reflective of the album’s themes, which “are dreams and metamorphosis, change and evolution,” Mackenzie explains. “It’s a journey, it’s a fantasy. It’s one of our lightest records, and it’s come out of this really trying time. We were challenging ourselves on this album to make something we’d never done before, which is a major-key, positive, uplifting record.”

Stream Butterfly 3000 by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard on the platform of your choice here or listen via Spotify below.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Butterfly 3000 – Full Album

 

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[UPDATE 6/8/20]: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have finally revealed some details about the Butterfly 3000—but only if you speak something other than English. Even if you don’t, now’s a good opportunity to learn how to say “Lizard Wizard” in German. Check out the record sleeve in various languages below.

 

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[5/11/21] King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will return on June 11th with the band’s 18th studio album, Butterfly 3000. The 10-track LP will be released via the band’s own KGLW label.

Though the Australian alt-psych rockers sent out a press release announcing the album on Tuesday, details are scarce. They are the first to admit that it is keeping details of Butterfly 3000 close to the vest: King Gizzard will not release any singles ahead of the June 11th drop date, or a tracklist, or even album artwork. The band described the Butterfly 3000 artwork as, “a cross-eyed autostereogram created by long-time collaborator Jason Galea.”

Related: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Announce “Bootlegger” Program

With no previews of the upcoming album, the only details of its musical content come from the band’s press release.

Their 18th studio album, Butterfly 3000 might be their most fearless leap into the unknown yet; a suite of ten songs that all began life as arpeggiated loops composed on modular synthesisers, before being fashioned into addictive, optimistic and utterly seductive dream-pop by the six-piece. The album sounds simultaneously like nothing they’ve ever done before, and thoroughly, unmistakeably Gizz, down to its climactic neon psych-a-tronic flourish. This is undoubtedly the most accessible and jubilant album of their career.

Butterfly 3000 by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is available to pre-save on streaming platforms here. Scroll down to see a fake tracklist sent in the press release.

Butterfly 3000 Tracklist
1.    ?
2.    ?
3.    ?
4.    ?
5.    ??
6.    ?????
7.    ?????
8.    ?????
9.    ?????
10. ?!?!?!?!

View Tracklist