There’s something rather disconcerting about the melody played by the acoustic guitar and flutey keyboards on KGLW, the short, stately opener on King Gizzard’s 16th album in just eight years. A return to the quarter-tone tunings that they first used on Flying Microtonal Banana in 2017, these scales colour their songs with an unspecified exotica with a Middle Eastern vibe.
Ontology evokes the approach of American psychedelic group The Kaleidoscope on their 1967 tune Egyptian Gardens allied to a 21st century take on raga rock. It also echoes the group’s own Nonagan Infinity from 2016, in that many of the songs seem like variations on each other, but that album’s relentless rhythmic drive is replaced here by drummer Michael Cavanagh’s skipping syncopated beats. He gives the songs a feel of rotation, which complements the twisting, complex vocal melodies. Towards the end of the album it starts to veer away from this template. Honey is more straightahead, but that track’s breezy lightness is chomped up by the closer The Hungry Wolf Of Fate with its snarling wah-wah riffs and lead guitar wig-outs.