Astral Thoughts

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard “Kepler-22b”

Michael Cavanagh drums on “Kepler-22b” like a man extremely eager to get sampled. He’s dialed into tight pocket groove but he sounds relaxed, so the beat never feels stiff and the fills just tumble out with ease. You’ve definitely heard versions of this beat before and the familiarity is part of the charm here – there’s something so satisfying about the way Cavanagh hits the marks, like an itch getting scratch. It’s possible that the rest of the music was written before the drums were worked but it sounds very much like the King Gizzard crew are following the rhythm’s lead into jazz/R&B territory. It’s still in their spacey comfort zone and that’s actually literal when it comes to the lyrics, in which Stu Mackenzie sings about a kid obsessed with a distant planet that’s theoretically capable of sustaining human life.

Buy it from Bandcamp.