King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - The Silver Cord

While the fact that King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard aren’t ones to rest on their laurels should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who’s paid any attention to the band over the last decade, it remains nothing short of impressive how the Aussie six-piece still continue to confound all expectation heading into their 25th album. Armed with a newly acquired 1980s Simmons electronic drum kit, as many keyboards as they could fit into one studio and modular synthesisers they could barely operate, King Gizz unleash here an unexpected suite of harsh, leftfield, retro-futuristic, electronic pop. While 2021’s ‘Butterfly 3000’ tickled similarly synthetic fancies, ‘The Silver Cord’ is by contrast far more alarming.

Channelling the old-school textures of synth pioneers like Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder while wiring in the dirty club beats of PC Music-esque hyperpop - the results of which are sometimes very strange indeed - ‘The Silver Cord’ is often magnificent and always supremely fun. ‘Chang’e’ zips and soars through space and time with the cutest euphoria; the frenetic drum loops on ‘Swan Song’ could soundtrack a fight scene from blade, and ‘set’ is pure robotic sass - its refrain of “Slay the mind-set” providing an instant earworm. And also, for those willing to completely lose themselves in this cybernetic nightmare, the album comes with a second version of ten minute-plus extended mixes, because why not?