The chance to see King Gizzard live in Australia feels rarer than ever, and due to personal circumstances I had resigned myself to not seeing them here. That was fortunately able to happen thanks to several people reading this that know who they are, thank you again.
No recordings have surfaced from their previous shows that I have seen, I thought this was likely to happen again so I was determined to capture the whole thing, and I am infinitely glad I did.
I’ve never recorded music before, so I hung around the stage for a few acts earlier on, scoping out a spot and doing some short tests with the setup. Recording was forbidden at the event and stealth was on my mind, luckily I found a good spot where I could clip the mic and leave the spare phone hidden while I enjoyed the show in the crowd and hoped for the best.

 

The Flying Microtonal Banana was out (as well as someone in the audience in a banana costume), and I quickly spotted Cavs’ Ferrari vest that indicated things might get heavy.
For a festival like this with tightly controlled one hour sets most acts were playing their older hits, so Rattlesnake as opener made probably the most sense. I felt it gave a good idea of the split in the crowd between fans (who tended to stick out) and people just interested in the name enough to show up (this seemed to be the majority). It seemed pretty much everyone was into it very quickly, and while this song is very well worn-in, it's still a great time and makes for a good warm up, in this case it was also freshened up in arrangement with some extra keys from Ambrose.

I had been trying not to overhype myself for particular songs or styles, trusting that it would basically be impossible to be disappointed in the setlist. Any worry I did have was wasted, as the rest of the songs were all released in the time since I last saw the band in 2019.
While Pleura is fairly low in my preferences for microtonal songs, it still went to show how tight the band are in learning and playing newer songs that never had the benefit of being in every setlist for years on end. It was still chill enough to properly start to scope out the crowd, seeking out gaps in front of me to slip through while everyone geared up for some more energetic music; we were immediately satisfied.

Self-Immolate was the first peak in crowd energy, but I still hadn’t quite reached the mosh pit and was focusing on the stage. This was a great song to appreciate Lucas’ enhanced ability and live emphasis since the pandemic, he overall was doing a fantastic job holding it down and keeping it cool during an undeniably scorching song.

Everything stepped up a notch with the segue into the PetroDragonic Apocalypse songs, which of course represent another leap in technical ability for the band, but most of all Cavs, who quite clearly has been maintaining a level of performance fitness that might be equal to the rest of them combined. It became clear that his powerful intro solo for Self-Immolate was merely a warm up. I finally realised that the vest in all the PDA promo is actually a necessity, allowing just that bit of extra mobility around the shoulders that he completely maximised.
It is worth mentioning that it was freezing cold (by our standards), and so Cavs was probably keenest of all to get warmed up, which the band eagerly helped him oblige the crowd in doing.

Now that the most intense moshing was done, the tone and the crowd shifted enough for me to finally make it up to what turned into more of a floor than a pit in preparation for things to get positively mediterranean in temperature.
Deep down, I had been hoping that we would get some jamming; I knew with a short set this would be diminished, so the pacing they managed for the next three songs was incredible.
Really only with DJs in nightclubs have I ever had the space and impetus to dance properly, so it was an absolute joy to get to do the same here at Joey’s instruction. With most of the moshers taking a break, this was a moment that many other people seemed to have been waiting for, and we all emerged to seize it. Never have I been so unified with a whole crowd as during all of Ice V. I really have no idea where all the space came from for us all to be able to move so freely and synchronised for so long.

Twelve minutes of The Dripping Tap was up next, which felt about as long by itself as the whole rest of the set had. Probably something to do with totally giving myself up to the flow and the whim of the mosh pit, which was not the most aggressive I’ve seen, but easily one of the largest and most energetic. I didn’t go all-in as I was trying to conserve energy, but letting myself get swept up was about the most fun I’ve had seeing live music that I can remember.
People all around were quite literally slipping on the drip (and being helped up), and I felt lucky to not lose any of the pins on my jacket and stay on my feet. At least until one of the several rowing circles formed surrounding me, and we all involuntarily, simultaneously fell back on to the ground. It is a very strange group-think phenomenon that I always thought was meant to signify Vikings (and done in Scandinavian metal crowds), but this was more spontaneous and not at all aggressive. It seemed it was no particular person or groups’ idea, but just somehow something that happened to whole segments of the crowd at the same time; perhaps necessary to navigate the puddles formed by all the dripping from the stage.
After most of the song alternately being tossed and spun around by the crowd and rowing on the ground, I made my way back to the edge to catch my breath and cool down where two things caught my attention. One was someone hunched being helped out to the side (I never found out what happened there, but it looked like they were getting the space and attention they needed), the other was a guy standing motionless, still on the edge of the pit, deep in the crowd, motionless, staring at the stage and eating an apple.

Magma, I would have been happy with any other jam-style songs, but this is my favourite track from Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava. It really is a monolithic song, and never as much as when you are seeing and feeling it for an extended duration right in front of you. If TDT was shockingly short, in hindsight I sort of can’t believe that Magma actually went for longer, giving it three minutes over its studio version, while TDT was shortened by six.
I think I mostly stood swaying and got a bit mesmerised alternately watching what the band was doing on stage and closing my eyes to see if it made a difference. All I really remember from this song is a lot of very bright red light with my arms around my partner - who I had miraculously found after making my way back a few rows.
Most of the detail I am appreciating from being able to listen back to the recording, such as the siren-like guitar at 54:00. It sounds a bit like the world ending while all we can do is skip straight past panic and stand around watching. But not in a chaotic way - the volcano rises constantly and consistently out of the ground at a moderate distance, its base widening one increment at a time while the magma oozes out into lava that flows steadily down the slopes, bathing us all in warm light.
A few times through the set I made sure to truly take the moment and live in what was happening around me, and this was the most immanent of those. I was totally struck by how unusual it was for an outlier band like this to capture all these people with what is essentially prog-rock at Australia’s closest equivalent to Coachella.
The finale just kept building and building and building, I still can’t really understand where all the sound was coming from, or what would have happened if the band weren’t able to regain control and stop it.

But they did. We reconvened with another friend, a true gizz-head who was seeing the band for the first time, and had a blast even having lost his beanie and jacket after getting as close to the front as he could.
The weird, massive hour the band had carved out of the festival was over, and we followed Joey’s suggestion to go see Marlon Williams, Little Simz, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Flume, and several others that remained totally eclipsed by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

By this stage most of my friends knew I'd gotten into the band heavily, and so when they found out I was going to see them, a few came along to see what the fuss was about. All had a good time, but none were converted by what was in hindsight a fairly strange show with an experimental setlist. This showed the band trying to break away from their older more rigidly structed sets, into a more flexible and diverse regime in preparation for the jam era. 

The main thing that struck me as different was the amount of time Stu spent sat at a keyboard, and the number of his songs Joey took lead vocals on. I imagine this was due to a health issue, so I feel lucky the show went ahead at all; but must acknowledge it threw off the pace and energy a bit.
We were right in between the releases of Fishing For Fishies and Infest The Rats Nest, and got a healthy dose of both, mimicking the whiplash of singles that came from rolling out both starkly different albums at the same time.
One interesting aspect of this was that the boogie songs maintained a much harder edge than their studio versions, but apart from that, the set was all over the place. The Inner Cell trilogy was as impressive as ever, but the highlight had to be the run of songs from Cyboogie through to Acarine. Just a weird mix that surely peaked with This Thing, that Joey really took the spotlight for and cranked it up for a euphoric, nearly trance-like finish.

Ambrose looked to be tripping hard, and seemed to be as caught off guard as the rest of us by Tezeta; immediately after it finished Joey asked him something that he replied to with a confused shake of the head. Joey then had to walk across the stage and apparantly remind him where he was, and that he was due to take the lead on Billabong Valley, which he killed anyway.

I remember an abrupt ending, and then it seemed they wanted to clear the room quickly as they put on the PA what sounded like Joey covering AC/DC in an obnoxious, high-pitched grating vocal.
A quite fun, raging at times, but strange show. Thinking back, it makes me chuckle at what it must have seemed like to my friends who had barely listened to the band at all, to hear the Polygondwanaland songs, Cyboogie, Acarine, Murder Of The Universe, Tezeta, in the same show, and then Organ Farmer to close.

No known recording and a shortened festival set, if it wasn't for the sake of reviewing every show I have attended then perhaps this one wouldn't need mentioning.  
I still had a good time, but my memory of this is dominated by a 15 minute delay at the start while they dealt with technical issues for the stage, with subsequent breaks between songs while the band members frantically tried to get things adjusted and fixed communicating through their in-ear monitors. This meant a very little crowd communication, and a basic setlist with nothing standing out from their previous show that I had seen the week prior.

The best thing about this was their ability at moments to still drum up a lot of high, fun energy in a crowd of mostly non-fans, outdoors, right in the middle of a very hot day. They weren't exactly at home in the festival lineup (Lorde, Vance Joy, San Cisco, Tash Sultana etc. headlining) but there must have been at least a decent contingent there to mosh for Dune Rats, Bad//Dreems and perhaps the DJ tent, and of course King Gizz. Because they really showed up for The Lord of Lightning and Rattlesnake in particular, which the band dished out nicely, even with an abrupt ending for time.

Other random thoughts from the day:
This festival was meant to host the first ever trial of legal pill testing in Australia, which was cancelled at the last minute. There was a palpable sense of dissapointment among attendees, and the police presence came with a strange new undertone of political influence. The trial went ahead the following year instead, and was a verified success in identifying dangerous adulterations in substances that attendees were planning to ingest. Years on, the city is now home to Australia's first permanent drug sample testing facility (showing similar positive outcomes), and it's territory also became the first (still only) place where cannabis is decriminalised in Australia.  
Considering the outcome of this performance, and that it remains the only time they have played in Canberra; I suppose I am just lamenting a bit on the lagging drug harm reduction laws of this country, and the wasted potential of such a progressive city on a struggling arts industry and conflicted culture.

Gizzfest at Luna Park was the perfect show to see King Gizzard live for the first time. I had been obssesed with them for a year, and was getting deep into the rest of the Flightless catalogue, most of which were also playing along with some new friends of the band.
It was my first time there as a music venue too. I hadn't been into the Big Top before, and being attached to the amusement park made the indoor stage feel almost like a giant circus tent. I'm glad we showed up early as they had most of the park attractions running, ferris wheel and all, and the place was draped in Jason Galea art installations. After a drink at the bar, we headed to the dodgem cars, and to my surprise saw half the band themselves had even taken the opportunity for a go, making themselves very popular targets. Yet meeting Stu shortly after only proved what everyone says about how gracious and kind the band members are with their time for fans.
They weren't the only performers mingling. It was impossible to miss a particular crew cutting through the crowds, who I later realised was Amyl and the Sniffers when I unexpectedly caught the end of their blistering set. I had showed up early to catch the start of Leah Senior's, the polar opposite in vibe but also excellent. There is much to say about getting to see Kikagaku Moyo, La Luz, The Murlocs, and glimpses of all the others at the same event, but this is a King Gizzard show review after all; we'd all put in a big evening already and were plenty worked up by the time their headline set begun.

The hype music on the house speakers included Rockets - On The Road Again, and the crowd started to get excited thinking they were previewing new music, little did we know it forshadowed the electronic boogie that would come two years later. A red nonagon appeared on the back of the stage, and suddenly the show had begun. Polygondwananaland had not even been out for a week yet, they were fully riding the crest of the wave of 2017 albums and so the setlist was comprised mostly of these with a few staples thrown in. A thick rendition of Digital Black was an early impressive moment, but our collective minds were really blown when the bassline at the end of The Lord of Lightning transitioned into Cellophane; just as fans had discovered with the studio versions in the last few months picking through the links planted between the new and old music.
I don't think anyone expected anything from Sketches Of Brunswick East, the energy was not right for this show, but the next surprise was Crumbling Castle. We were all still getting our heads around Polygondwanaland, and from the moment that first song had dropped as a single the question had risen: can they play this kind of music live? Of course the answer was a confident yes, the polyrythms and ambitious arrangement only elevated the performance beyond the familiar realm of the fast and loud energy that had dominated their live show since the earliest punk days through to the Nongaon Infinity tracks they still had in high rotation. This new realm was much headier, and just while it seemed like anything was possible, they blasted us once again with the most intense parts of MOTU and Nonagon Infinity, melting the final remnants of brains and faces with the injection of some Hawkwind into Robot Stop.

I had never been in a crowd like this before. There was a palpable sense of people at ease just being themselves in the dark room, where high intensity moshing, and chilling to the side openly smoking a joint both made sense. A huge variety of different band shirts were on display too, from all the bands present, to the classics like Pink Floyd, to various experimental Hip-Hop artists, to no top at all for one woman who spent a whole song standing (not sitting) swaying on someone else's shoulders.

Into the Flying Microtonal Banana tracks, and I was very satisfied with a perfect version of Nuclear Fusion, the first song to release after I had fully descended into fandom and it had remained my favourite. One of the few to truly utilise two drummers playing out of unison, the panning effect was doubly impressive live, while Joey was still doing the intro with the originally intended throat singing technique that ended up being too harsh on his voice to continue using. Doom City into Rattlesnake made a great peak in the crowd energy, who moshed out the last of it in preparation for the finale, the very unexpected Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer. I didn't understand why it wouldn't have been The River, which was also a favourite of mine (and still their most played song that I haven't yet seen), but in hindsight the rarity of this track made it a real treat to cap off what would be the second last Gizzfest. I allowed the exhaustion of seeing five or six sets to wash over me, and it felt like even the rest of the band did too, leaving Stu front and center with us all in his hands. That was the most I ever thought he looked like a classic rock star, confidently channeling a mellow energy into the atmosphere that I used to start stretching my sore lower back in preparation for the seemingly endless uphill walk to the train station and home. It is a long song anyway, and made for one of those moments that felt like it would go forever, not even in the style of jamming, I have no idea if it was even extended beyond the studio version, but in a sense it feels like Stu is still bathed in yellow light and sustaining some of those chords even now.

Some of the crowd stuck around chanting for an encore, but I had the sense that they were not that kind of band, and I think most of the crowd had also realised the finality; I think it would have probably even spoiled the moment for them to come back out.
I already had tickets to their next show the week later in Canberra, which was another leap for me as I'd never seen the same band twice up until that point. I could never have forseen the value of the investment that this first show established, but looking back I am infinitely glad that this was my first King Gizzard performance.