Butterfly 3000

Album review

This is a new mutation of King Gizzard! The ten tracks on Butterfly 3000 see Stu McKenzie and his team develop their cryptic language. Against a dazzling concept-album background whose tracks run into one another, forming a whole, this 18th album goes in for psychedelic modular experiments, like the sublime synth progression on Blue Morpho with its kaleidoscopic chorus or Yours, which introduces the over-powered rhythm section. Stu's Passion Pit-style lead vocals flood these ten compact tracks, each one just under the six-minute mark. The result is a new journey into his overflowing musical imagination. As ever, there are many influences at work here. The oriental strings on Interior People evoke an 80s synthpop which is perfect for live performances; the influence of Tame Impala and MGMT has never been more prominent (Catching Smoke, Ya Love);  later we find the simple keyboard sounds of Japanese videogames (Dreams), while the progressive stylings of Hawkwind offer a backdrop.

Butterfly 3000 is the first remnant of modular synthetic loops which the artist began in 2019, while writing the film-concert Chunky Shrapnel, whose release was thrown into disarray in early March 2020 by the pandemic. The piece was then reworked amid the gloom of lockdown. So while the distortions of Black Hot Soup immerse the work in drama, the climax of the album, 2.02 Killer Year and the voice of Ambrose Kenny-Smith brings closure to a record that is bursting with hope "Hope you can see the beauty within the grim world's ugly mess", a rare mood for KGLW. This is a successful, if facetious, tour de force for the audacious Australians, in which the electric gives way to the synthetic. © Charlotte Saintoin / Qobuz