Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by Eva Walker, host of Early on KEXP, is "Theia (Extended Mix)" by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, from the 2023 album The Silver Cord on KGLW.
The Australian psych sextet King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard might be making KEXP history with this 20-minute long track, which I'm pretty sure is the longest Song of the Day offering to date! The single comes from their 25th overall LP (and second of 2023), The Silver Cord, which finds the experimental group delving into electronic music.
“We come at electronic music from an amateur angle,” frontman Stu Mackenzie says in a press release. “I play the Juno synthesizer like a guitar, I don’t really know how to play it. But I wanted to be at peace with being the rock band pretending to know how to use modular synthesizers. We’re in uncharted waters, we’re further out to sea, but leaning into it, and we got to a spot where we were really happy with what came out.”
As for today's Song of the Day, Mackenzie declares, "It’s for the Gizz-heads," adding, "I love Donna Summer’s records with Giorgio Moroder, and I’d never listen to the short versions now – I’m one of those people who wants to hear the whole thing. We’re testing the boundaries of people’s attention spans when it comes to listening to music, perhaps – but I’m heavily interested in destroying such concepts."
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard will be playing one of their "marathon" shows — a three-hour live concert! — on Saturday, September 14th at The Gorge Amphitheatre.
