King Gizzard’s twenty-sixth studio album Flight b741 is nearly here and as to be expected there’s a lot of hype around it.
Here’s the rundown for those out of the loop:

The album is coming out on August 9th, 2024. A single vinyl variant will be available from p(doom) Records on July 9th at 6am PDT / 9am EDT / 2pm BST / 3pm CEST / 11pm AEST. That same day will see the release of the first single as well as a music video directed by Guy Tyrack (who previously did the video for “Black Hot Soup”).

Flight b741 is return to the blues rock and boogie roots of the band as most prominently heard on Fishing For Fishies. Ambrose had stated that he was interested in returning to that sound on the band’s website: “For years we would always talk about making a record for each member in the bands’ taste. I was always begging for us to do a blues boogie type thing. It ended up taking a pretty different path and FFF is the outcome of that. I reckon we should try and dabble again with the whole boogie thing, hopefully next time in a more psychedelic prog way.”
Flight b741 might be that album he was dreaming up. Ambrose said of Flight b741 “It’s pretty rock / blues-rock — sort of like a classic ‘70s-sounding album. Lots of energy. Lots of big vibes going on. We’re in the stages of shooting video clips and finishing off the artwork.” Work seemed to begin in the summer of 2023 with Stu saying to SPIN that they were already working on a few projects. Beyond what the album is conceptually, it’s the first Gizzard record to be released on their new label p(doom) Records (though it is not the first record from the label as GUM/Ambrose-Kenny Smith’s Ill Times will be released on July 19th). It is also the first new release from King Gizzard this year, as new bootlegs have yet to be published.

So far the band has played five songs from Flight b741 live. The first was “Sad Pilot”, a blues rock/southern rock song about a pilot looking to overcome their own personal problems. Right now it’s the most played song from Flight b741 with five performances on the band’s EU tour.
“Le Risque” was the second debut and saw the first lead vocal appearance of Cavs, who sings a vocal break in the middle of the song while seated at his kit. It features a few unique moments, a trend seen in the other songs from the album that have been played live.
Next up was the multi-part blues song “Daily Blues”, which focuses on the division that ideology creates and trying to find peace, though the song doesn’t tolerate the intolerant with lines like “well all the bigots go get fucked.”
“Raw Feel” followed with vocal parts from everyone but Cavs. Like “Le Risque” and “Daily Blues”, this is another song with multiple distinct parts including a moment that, based on live performances, sees Cook take the lead.
The final song to debut was “Mirage City” which describes someone escaping a small town and their family to try and find the titular city, which does not exist (similar to “Magenta Mountain”).
While they’ve played half of the album live, we’ve also seen a number of teases and quotes during different performances (like “The Bitter Boogie” from 2024-05-27).

The full tracklist is as follows:

1. “Mirage City”
2. “Antarctica”
3. “Raw Feel”
4. “Field of Vision”
5. “Hog Calling Contest”
6. “Le Risque”
7. “Flight b741”
8. “Sad Pilot”
9. “Rats in the Sky”
10. “Daily Blues”

The album cover was done by Jason Galea and depicts a wooden airplane with eight pigs piloting it, which seems to be a reference to the song “Hog Calling Contest.” The plane is a model with the pigs being made out of clay based on an Instagram post from Galea.