King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announce their 27th album Phantom Island, out 13th June and share its lead single ‘Deadstick’. If you’re worried that, 15 years and 26 albums into their epic quest, polymorphous psychedelic voyagers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard might be running out of new frontiers to traverse, then let their latest opus set your mind to rest.
The band’s second release on their own (p)doom records label, Phantom Island sees our intrepid heroes add a new dimension to their ever-evolving songcraft, embracing the symphonic and embroidering their tangles of lysergic riff and melody with strings and horns and woodwind.
The roots of the album can be traced back to the group’s legendary show at the Hollywood Bowl in June 2023. Gizz met some members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic backstage who urged them to take part in an annual series where the orchestra plays alongside rock and pop acts. Fast-forward to 2024, and the Gizz are hunkered down in their clubhouse, plugged into tiny practice amps and choogling to their hearts’ content. The results of these sessions yield that year’s Aria-nominated Flight b741. But these sessions yielded ten further songs that didn’t quite fit the Flight b741 vibe, and which, Mackenzie says, “were harder to finish. Musically, they needed a little more time and space and thought.”
Listen to ‘Deadstick’ – BELOW:
Quickly, the group’s collective mind leapt to the LA Philharmonic. “The songs felt like they needed this other energy and colour, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” Mackenzie says. He reached out to friend, British historical keyboardist, conductor and arranger Chad Kelly. “He brings this wealth of musical awareness to his chameleon-like arrangements,” Mackenzie says. “We come from such different worlds – he plays Mozart and Bach and uses the same harpsichords they did, and tunes them the exact same way. But he’s obsessed with microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me.” Lead single “Deadstick” puts Kelly’s elaborate orchestrations on display, raising the graceful and complex song to the sublime, transforming it into a giddy jazz-rock riot.
On the song’s accompanying video, director Guy Tyzack says: “I started off wanting to create a frame that looked like a landscape painting with many different people and set pieces dotted about. Deadstick refers to when a plane propeller stops midflight so I decided to have a massive plane made out of cardboard crash land into a beautiful location. The song is big and chaotic so then I went about casting swing dancers and eccentric extras to fill the landscape.”
If Flight b741 was an album of rambunctious adventure stories, Phantom Island picks up that thread, spinning its tales of quests and piracy out into the stars. But it’s a more interior album than its predecessor, more melancholy – more “introverted”, Mackenzie says. Sure, these are tales of high adventure in galaxies far, far away, but the focus is less on the action, and more on the interior lives of those adventurers, reflecting the kind of insight Gizz have gleaned from 15 years of travelling the world and leaving their homes behind to take their music to the people. There’s a wiser, more mature, more sensitive Gizz at play here, questioning their place within the universe, their responsibilities, the ties that bind. “When I was younger, I was just interested in freaking people out,” admits Mackenzie, “but as I get older, I’m much more interested in connecting with people.”
PHANTOM ISLAND TRACKLIST
1. Phantom Island
2. Deadstick
3. Lonely Cosmos
4. Eternal Return
5. Panpsych
6. Spacesick
7. Aerodynamic
8. Sea of Doubt
9. Silent Spirit
10. Grow Wings and Fly
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard also recently announced a European/UK tour later in the year, during which they will alternate between playing rave and orchestra shows.
In November, the prolific Australian group will bring their 2025 Phantom Island Orchestral Tour to the world-famous Royal Albert Hall and several European cities. Led by conductor and musical director Chad Kelly, the performances will see the group play select songs from their vast catalogue, including never-before-heard tracks off Phantom Island.
With the rave sets taking inspiration from The Silver Cord, their 2023 foray into electronic / synth-heavy sounds, prepare to dance while KGLW evolves in real time. They are taking their extensive oeuvre through a complete transformation, swapping their no-nonsense guitars and fuzz pedals for a bastardised fully modular synthesis table that shares the same beating heart of their ethos—ambitious, improvised, and epiphanic.
This summer also sees the Melbourne 6-piece take the orchestra show on a U.S. run which will feature a different accompanying 29-piece orchestra in each city before which they head to the EU for a European Residency Tour for early summer which sees them play multiple-night shows in Lisbon, Barcelona, Vilnius, Athens and Plovdiv.
The full list of EU / UK shows is as follows:
18-20.05.25 – Coliseu do Recreios – LISBON
23-25.05.25 – Poble Espanyol – BARCELONA
29-31.05.25 – Lukiškės Prison 2.0 – VILNIUS
04.06.06.25 – Lycabettus Theatre City of Athens – ATHENS
08-10.05.25 – Ancient Theatre – PLOVDIV
31.10.25 – Aviva Studios – MANCHESTER (rave set)
01.11.25 – Electric Brixton – LONDON (rave set)
02.11.25 – Electric Brixton – LONDON (rave set)
04.11.25 – Royal Albert Hall – LONDON (with Covent Garden Sinfonia)
05.11.25 – La Seine Musicale – PARIS (with L’Orchestre Lamoureux)
06.11.25 – 013 – TILBURG, NL (rave set)
07.11.25 – Mainstage – DEN BOSCH, NL (with Sinfonia Rotterdam)
09.11.25 – Inside Seaside Festival – GDANSK, PL (with The Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra)
10.11.25 – Columbiahalle – BERLIN (rave set)
11.11.25 – SaSaZu – PRAGUE (rave set)
12.11.25 – Gasometer – VIENNA (rave set)
14.11.25 – Poolen – COPENHAGEN (rave set)
15.11.25 – Gothenburg Film Studios – GOTHENBURG (rave set)
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