To wrap up 2017’s Polygondwanaland King Gizzard plays “The Fourth Colour.” After searching for the powers of tetrachromacy, the album’s protagonist is finally allowed to see beyond the three cones in their eye and ascends to omnipresence. Reborn as a God, they are allowed to see anything and everything in the universe, though the song’s ending may imply that it’s much uglier than they imagined. While the song starts as a fast paced prog-rock song, it evolves into an ambient synth piece before hitting the listener with a chaotic psychedelic rock freak out with the sound of the band screaming over the shrieking guitars. In retrospect the song is a fitting end to Polygondwanaland. The album was released as the first official bootlegger album on November 17th, 2017 for free. This song celebrates the newfound freedom of its protagonist who is now unchained from their previous limitations, their freedom fitting well with the album’s unrestrained nature.
Surprisingly, the roots of the song are the earliest out of any of the Polygondwanaland material. An early version of the song done at the band’s lodge in New York can be heard at the start of Jason Galea’s compilation documentary BOOTLEG HOLIDAY FROM HELL. Stu would confirm that the song was written during the 2014 sessions for I’m In Your Mind Fuzz during the band’s 2020 Reddit AMA. The early version of the song was played in standard tuning compared to the final version (played in C#) with no lyrics whatsoever. More archival footage of the song can be found in polygondwanaland the movie which features Stu playing guitar for the outro and a full band jam. The track would be recorded at Tender Trap Studios in Northcote by Ryan K. Brennan alongside “Crumbling Castle” and would appear officially when Polygondwanaland released in late 2017. Vinyl copies of the album have a unique ending for the song. Past the “freak out” portion of the song the confused cyborg Han-Tyumi says “hello.”
The earliest known performance wouldn’t happen until the following year on 2018-02-18 at the Croxton Park Hotel in Naarm (Melbourne), the same day “Polygondwanaland’ was also apparently played for the first time. Live performances of the song feature a unique break after the first verse before going into the second chorus and cut out the ending psychedelia entirely. The song early in its lifespan was typically part of a three song section of the show dedicated to Polygondwanaland material starting with “Polygondwanaland” then moving to “Crumbling Castle” which transitioned into “The Fourth Colour.” At the end of the song the ominous humming synth before the “freak out” section would be played over the speakers before going to “Robot Stop” and Nonagon Infinity music, though an occasional show like 2018-03-01 may have a track like “Cellophane” afterwards. On March 10th, the song was given a live music video released on March 10th, 2018 which was filmed 2018-03-06 at the Paradiso in Amsterdam.
Starting on 2018-05-24, “The Fourth Colour” would be incorporated into a long medley of late 2017 songs near the end of the set: “Crumbling Castle” > “The Fourth Colour” > “Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet” > “The Castle In The Air” > “Muddy Water.” The only difference between these versions of the song and ones from earlier in the year is that the synth outro was cut out entirely for “Deserted Dunes.” The song was played on 2019-11-23 at Fort Canning Park in Singapore (this time without the previous three songs following it) before dropping out of sets for the time being. It reappeared in the same form on 2022-10-02 at the Greek Theatre marathon show and has stayed with Gizzard ever since. For those wondering why the end of the song was never played live, the band doesn’t know either. Before the YouTube premiere for the “Dreams” music video, Stu wrote in chat “Yes, we should def do the fourth colour Outro. Dunno why we’ve never done that.”