King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Flying Microtonal Banana

Microtonality to our Western ears can be quite a hostile sonic territory.
In some parts of Italy, where Arab influence has been quite massive, the quarter tone is a common practice in both traditional and contemporary repertoires. Then, if you’ve never seen a concert by those young Neapolitan singers with earrings and charming, gelled hair dedicating songs to relatives and friends “guests of the state,” that’s your problem.
The fact is, paradoxically, apart from some contemporary speaking masters trying to play the role of Giacinto Scelsi (without much success), there was a historical moment when the Western world loudly clamored for a return to tonality. The Oriental atmospheres of Béla Bartók, the fascination with the East so deeply rooted in Satie's Paris, Charles Ives’ “notes between the cracks of the keys,” all went out of fashion.

The end of World War II swept away the East, reducing it to nothing more than a purely folkloristic concept. The efforts of all those artists who in the late 20th century insisted with quarters, thirds, eighths, and sixteenths of a tone, taking full advantage of string instruments to create that classic "avant-garde cultured music" atmosphere—which was avant-garde and has been archived as such—were of little avail.
There are also those who said: “But the archicembalo of Vicentino is better!”

Exceptions have been rare, among them the Sitar, well-received thanks to the pop gospel of George Harrison and company and thus elected a “psychedelic” instrument. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t associate the noble instrument with words like “journey” and “trip,” much easier to find someone who doesn’t know Passages by Shankar and Philip Glass.

Traditional tonality, in the West, has ruled far and wide. Now come these Australians, set in that bandcampian ocean where you're never sure if you've caught a sea bass or a toilet bowl (but the discography seems to lean more towards the sea bass). A seven-piece collective that already has some very interesting albums to its credit and the idea of proposing a “Flying Microtonal Banana” volume 1 is very pleasant. It seems that by 2017 they will reach volume 5.

Not even Albertino in his heyday managed to reach 5 Deejay Parades in a year, and for this, I give them credit, well done to them.

Well done for believing in it, especially because yes, the “alternative” discography is experiencing a happy moment but it really takes a strong dose of enthusiasm to present oneself five times a year in front of the meat grinder, the report cards, and the recording studio.

Probably, beyond the equipment and the “tuning,” they decided to also inherit the Eastern charm of asceticism.

However, I feel sorry about one thing. Had they believed in it a bit more, I would be here telling you about the masterpiece of the 2000s, because there are many high-level references, even ethnomusicological, excellent lyrics, excellent or at least relevant to the historical moment. Unfortunately, the production is extremely vintage, sounds a bit like an independent caricature, the filtered voice feels a bit like “listen to us, see how alternative we are,” and it somewhat detracts from the intent to tell a story like a wrong story, comparing their intent in antithesis to the barber shop harmonic choruses that appear pitch-perfect and consonant, while they are “out of tune” and cool.

Cage and Scelsi wouldn’t have done it!

The truth is that perfection does not exist: the compromise of equal temperament has given us an approximate model but one humanly accepted by our hearing.

And all this just to play at creating a magic circle where music increasingly approaches and modulates closer to the word.

And so, even the effort to play ring-around-the-rosy with music has the bitter taste of compromise and certainly all this cannot lead to a truth in the ring with the blue 12-TET shorts, against another truth in red shorts and 24-TET on the other side.

Otherwise, if it has to be this way, artists like Jandek win, who with his out-of-tune guitar and his loser interjection has cranked out entire discographies of albums, to put it in their terms, “unlistenable.”

Flying Microtonal Banana is an excellent album because, firstly, it's very listenable and, not insignificantly, a great new find all to be discovered. I recommend grabbing the record, with truly well-done artwork and a banana-yellow vinyl. Plus, a “scratch'n sniff” sticker that reminded me a bit of the tacky, carcinogenic stuff from the Eighties and John Waters’ Polyester in Odorama. Who knows what these guys will come up with for the rest of 2017.

Just keep an eye on them, and at the end of the day, they deserve a third eye.