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Review: Omnium Gatherum
by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Joe Wald
Omnium Gatherum, the latest release by Australian quasipsychedelic prog rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, is an acid-fuelled fever dream of weirdness. The album is a collection of offcuts, songs which did not fit into previous albums reanimated, made complete, and slotted in amongst a handful of new tunes. It’s a risky strategy for a band renowned for politically charged works on big issues, and those after a hazy yet gritty admonition of the perils of fossil fuel dependence will be disappointed. But aside from these, or frankly any, expectations, it is a complete work full of humour, profundity, and unique sounds.
Few artists can compete with the prolific ‘Gizzy’ on volume of musical output: astonishingly, this double-LP is the twentieth album that the band has released in a decade. King Gizzard have earned the right to choose their own musical direction and to fly in the face of expectation, and they waste no time in doing so in this album. The first track, ‘The Dripping Tap’ is an unapologetic eighteen-minute thrash, lasting the whole of side A. It opens in the melancholic lounge-pop style of Odd- ments (2014) before turning up the metal just one minute in. The lyrics and melody of the introduction recur sporadically over the driving distortion-heavy guitar line, and the drums push ahead incessantly. In spite of the speed at which most of the song moves, there is no rush, and eighteen minutes slips by effortlessly. Frontman Stu Mackenzie’s vocals are mischievously tonguein-cheek and the entire track boasts an attitude of unfazed playfulness. Dizzying, maybe. Impressive, no doubt. The title of the album means ‘an assortment of miscellaneous things’, and the freedom of this concept is palpable. Side B glides through synth-led ‘Magenta Mountain’, a hits-thespot pop track, into the jazz-hop style ‘Kepler-22b’ before moving onto the thuds and grates of metal smash ‘Gaia’. The first four songs have no right to be in the same album, but that doesn’t bother The Gizz. The switches are erratic but the transitions are beautifully crafted and rarely feel forced. ‘Gaia’ melts into ‘Ambergris’ with the ultimate satisfaction and it’s clear that the group is up to this ambitious task.
Not every experiment hits the mark, though. ‘Sadie Sorceress’ is Gizzy’s surprise rap debut, bottled 90s hip-hop mixed with crashbang-wallop bassline funk and poured over pseudo-ironic angst. It calls back to a strange phase for music, the mid-2000s hey-day of white male American rap: artists with full tattoo sleeves and names like ‘Mac Lethal’ evacuate their Mid-Western twang all over the floor with a fuzz-pedal bass backing and an indifferent drummer to boot. It doesn’t do it for me. Whilst I am a big fan of the throw-enough-shitsome-of-it-will-stick approach, I think this one will go down as an own goal.
The rest of the album rocks back and forth with the delightful ease of an inside joke. There’s time for silly ideas like ‘The Garden Goblin’ and ‘Presumptuous’, tracks slathered in the indulgent nonchalance and disposable hyperbole of a band pulsating with confidence in its own unique sound. The punchline finally lands with the last four songs. The overdrive vocals of ‘Predator X’ are extreme to the point
of ridicule, which give way to a psychedelic fade-out lasting three songs. ‘Candles’ is a masterclass in the drummer’s ability to entirely dictate the mood of a song. Spooky synth overlays leering vocals and it is the drums which remind us if we weren’t sure before: we needn’t take any of this too seriously. We might think that we’re getting it, but the last laugh is Gizzy’s with ‘The Funeral’. Search for the meaning if you like, but the inescapable fact is that this album remains ‘an assortment of miscellaneous things’. A perfect cadence would feel wrong at the end of over an hour of chaos; it at once jars and fits seamlessly, simply by virtue of its weirdness. Omnium Gatherum is a complete work. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard started life out as a jamming outfit and this album illustrates how they have evolved without losing sight of the musical freedom upon which they are founded. It is an album where the overarch- ing point is that there is no overarching point; it takes this as its
unifying principle and enacts it uncompromisingly. The album speaks of an uninhibited group of musicians unfazed by external expectations of their sound. Very few of these tracks will make it onto your playlist and some miss the mark entirely, but they’re clearly enjoying themselves in their weird acid-trip delirium, and there’s a lot of joy in being there with them.
Image credits: Mark Derricutt/ Chalice of Blood via Libel Music ltd.
Summer reads: Adrift with Albert Camus
Matthew Holland
Iwas first introduced to Camus, rather informatively about my internet habits, from a quote on the Reddit page r/ QuotesPorn, taken from the Myth of Sisyphus: “Many people have asked what is the meaning of life. That answer is simple. It is whatever happens to prevent one, in any given moment, from killing themselves.” This quote spoke to my angsty 16-yearold-self’s obsession with existentialism and philosophy. While I grew out of that obsession, my admiration for Camus has continued and I can’t help feeling that his work continues to speak to me on a philosophical level, as if he understands me and has met me and written a book with express purpose of conveying my deepest thoughts and beliefs. The first of his numerous works which I read was possibly his most infamous, The Plague, which I bought secondhand from the Last Bookshop in Jericho. Telling the story of a mysterious plague which inflicts a fictitious coastal town on the French Riviera and set principally in a humid, suffocating summer, this book managed to be both incredibly profound and incredibly light reading all at once.
It invoked memories of my own experiences of summer in the time of a pandemic, appealed to my love of history with its allusions to Nazi tyranny and its metaphor for totalitarianism, and made me dream longingly of spending a summer in a dreamy, quiet French town, which as an Englishman brought up to xenophobically hate France, was a powerful effect to have on a human. While lacking in the depth which one would expect, the characters invoke a humanity that demands sympathy, as they are ground down by the relentless mental and physical toil of fighting back against the eponymous plague.
It was certainly after reading this seminal work that my obsession with Camus became indisputable. I became consumed in researching his life and his personal experiences; a survivor of French occupation who had worked with the French opposition, a lifelong lover of football, a prominent syndicalist who opposed radical Marxism at a time when it was the dominant political philosophy of intellectuals.
His works set in motion a reassessment of everything French for me, I began to appreciate French wine more, to understand why so many people are fascinated by the French language, and to also obsess with France as a setting. Not long after finishing The Plague, I watched Wes Anderson’s ‘The French Dispatch’ in the cinema, and felt deeply engrossed in the post-war France of Camus’ glory days.
Following on from this, I next read his other completed novel, The Stranger, which I will not pretend to have understood completely, and yet I appreciated it just as much as The Plague. Much like The Plague, it is the perfect balance of profound and entertaining, pulling me in with its setting of Algiers, Camus’ birthplace. As you read this book, you can feel the sun blistering your skin, and the feeling of the sand underneath your toes; a strange sensation as I read this book in January.
One can also feel the callousness and isolation of the titular character; a stranger to the society which he is experiencing, as he experiences disillusionment and disgust towards that very society which has made him a stranger. Another concept woven into this narrative is the interactions between native Algerians and the ‘Pied-Noir’ settlers from the country which occupied Algeria, a dynamic which Camus was familiar with as a Pied-Noir himself. The tragedy of reading Camus is knowing that his life was cut brutally short at the age of 46, and to know that as a result his work is limited. However, this can also add a preciousness to his works, which are so rich and developed with ideas and characters as to invoke more interest than three or four average authors. His numerous essays and non-fiction works help to inform and add to his list of fictional writings, providing enough reading for at least a summer if you pace yourself.
Image credits: Clay Banks
Doctor Strange and the Demilitarisation of the MarvelIndustrial Complex
Spoilers to follow. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a glorious disaster: a multi-million dollar, two-hour-long absolute train wreck of a film; the cinematic equivalent of a bathing in a warm septic tank. The film is hot, hot trash. A terrible script, piss-poor special effects, sickening direction. It was awful and I loved it. Perhaps this is my somewhat manic state of mind before my finals, but I laughed so hard at this film that it felt like bullying. Either this film was written by a seven year old or this is the biggest-budget episode of CBBC’s Prank Patrol to date; with Sam Raimi clearly playing the role of Barney Haywood, and the unwitting child cont-estant being the
millions of global Marvel fans. I commend Sam Raimi; with his 2001 Spiderman he accidentally started this billion-dollar, cinema-killing behemoth franchise and has now come back like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven to mercilessly bury it in its grave. This film is anti-nostalgia, it is a black hole destroying all that Marvel fans like. Raimi is here to brutally kill off every character that you love and I applaud him.
I have had more coherent fever dreams than the plot line for Doctor Strange 2. The opening ten minutes of the film are gloriously nonsensical, with an alternate version of Doctor Strange - who can speak Spanish for some reason (¿porque por qué carajo no?) - running along a rainbow bridge, attacking some massive zombieish tornado-like monster. The spinning camera and bright visuals almost made me gag on my popcorn. It reminded me of the scene in the Beavis and Butthead film when Beavis eats a peyote cactus in the desert and hallucinates demons. It’s less being thrown in the deep-end of a swimming pool, and more being forcibly kicked in and then belly-flopped on. When I left the film I was angry, I felt disrespected. I’ve sat through several films and television shows, watched endless debates, and read endless theories in the build-up to this A-Class crock of crap. This film has absolutely no respect to any fans of Marvel films. But this is my working theory: that is the point. Sam Raimi does not respect anyone watching these films, he hates the craft. He set out to make a purposefully awful super-hero film. And he succeeded with flying colours. This film is Godawful. Well done Sam! As George W. Bush proclaimed after the fall of Baghdad: mission accomplished. Perhaps I’m being a tad overdramatic, but this did feel like the final season of Game of Thrones; characters acting stupidly, a storyline that lost all sense of logic, ugly visuals and no satisfaction. Some might be upset by this, but I think it’s hilarious. I have wasted so much time! Oh well.
I have grown apathetic towards the Marvel films since Endgame; it seems to me that they have lost their way, indulging in the same narratives and tired tropes. The hype-culture surrounding Moon Knight epitomised this, with the filmmakers promising it would be ‘groundbreaking’, incredibly violent, and a deep character exploration; a project that would truly grasp mental health. It wasn’t any of that, it was the same. It’s strange, it feels like from Iron Man in 2008 to Avengers: Endgame in 2019, the filmmakers were careful in gradually bringing characters together and meticulously building up the stakes. Here, they have thrown all that patience away, with the stakes now being just unfathomably large, it’s not just New York or the world that is at risk but every single conceivable universe. Where do they go from here? How do the stakes get bigger than that? They literally can’t. The Marvel cinematic franchise is an Ouroboros: it is devouring itself.
I think my favourite moment was the introduction of the Illumanti, a superhero team who get their own Avengers style introduction; with Captain Carter and Captain Marvel, alongside fan-hyped Mister Fantastic and returning favourite Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier. What does Raimi do with this new, nostalgia-fuelled squad? Within five minutes, all these heroes are violently and suddenly murdered. Fans have speculated about John Krasinski in particular for years, pining for The Office actor to play the role of Reed Richards. And unfortunately for these nerds the monkey paw curled with gusto, with Krasinski being given less than ten lines of dialogue, not even showing his stretching powers, before being contorted into a pile of wet Pot Noodles. A general lack of disrespect to a loyal fan base from Marvel so aweinspiring it brings a tear to this cynic’s cold cheek. The overall cost of watching this film was £18, with a tenner for a ticket and eight quid for snacks; that feels less like a payment for a recreational activity and more of a tax on my own stupidity. I’m done with Marvel, and I feel like Marvel is done with Marvel.
Image credits (above): Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons
Image credits (left): NASA via Unsplash
