King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announce details of 27th album ‘Phantom Island’

Just a few weeks after announcing some hefty touring plans, Australia’s most prolific band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are back bearing news of their 27th(!!) album. 

Titled ‘Phantom Island’ and set to follow on from last year’s release ‘Flight b741’, the newest album from the psych masters is set for release on 13th June via (p)doom records and will be ten tracks in length. 

What’s more, the origins of the record - which includes elements of strings, horns and woodwind - began when the band played Hollywood Bowl in June 2023 and met some of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who would inadvertently help to inspire the project. “The songs felt like they needed this other energy and colour, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” the band’s Stu Mackenzie says, about reaching out to British historical keyboardist, conductor and arranger Chad Kelly, whose orchestration features on the record. “He brings this wealth of musical awareness to his chameleon-like arrangements. 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.”

Alongside news of their new record, the band have also shared its lead single, ‘Deadstick’, alongside a video directed by Guy Tyzack. “I started off wanting to create a frame that looked like a landscape painting with many different people and set pieces dotted about,” Tyzack explains of the clip. “‘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.”

Check out the video for ‘Deadstick’ below, and remind yourself of the band’s previously-announced UK/EU Rave/Orchestra tour dates underneath the player.