On November 10th, 2016, King Gizzard released the song “Rattlesnake.” Inspired by Krautrock, the song is a repetitive, hypnotic piece that introduces the listener to microtones — or notes outside of the twelve tone scale most commonly used in Western music. These notes and pitches would become a foundational element for a lot of the band’s music going forward on albums such as Flying Microtonal Banana, K.G. and L.W. as well as Sketches of Brunswick East and Gumboot Soup. However, “Rattlesnake” was not the first song officially released by the band to feature microtones. That honor goes to “Robot Stop” from Nonagon Infinity, released earlier that year on April 29th and featuring microtonal guitar during its instrumental break.
That said, if we really want to get technical, this wasn’t even the first time fans had heard the band dabble with new notes. While not officially released, the band’s first known experimentation outside the twelve tone scale was heard in early 2016 in the form of the track “Nonagon Intro Theme.” Centered around a simple drum beat, it features a chaotic, disjointed lead part on microtonal synthesizer. While the full song has not been heard by fans, we know it goes for at least a bit over two minutes total. The song is incredibly obscure within the band’s canon, and something only true diehards have any recollection of.

The track (accompanied by a short video) was used to open King Gizzard’s live shows in early 2016. The song played overtop footage of the nonagon putting itself together slowly. It’s unclear how many shows this intro was used for. Only one appearance is known to exist for certain: 2016-03-02 at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. Footage of this was captured both by the venue and by Jason Galea, who included it at the end of the documentary BOOTLEG HOLIDAY FROM HELL; the song gets its title from the description of Galea’s video. Available tapes from the time seem to indicate that it may have only appeared at a few shows. The band’s gig on 2016-02-28 at the Z-Bau in Nuremberg, only a few days before Brussels, does not contain the intro. Moving past March, their Levitation performance at the Barracuda in Austin on 2016-05-01 also doesn’t seem to have it. It seems that the track was only played in a window of March to April, though a lack of tapes from that specific time period make it impossible to know for sure.