Wide Awake: Infiltrating the cult of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard
08:36 – The train departs from Sheffield Station two minutes late. The journey to London brings with it a mixture of Manchester United and City fans heading to the FA Cup Final, tourists who have already started looking up tube routes, and locals who will be departing at the surrounding stations of Chesterfield, Derby and Leicester. The seat next to mine remains empty, so I use the tray to hold my coffee as the one in front of me is filled with the scribbles of a nearly full notebook.
“King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard” is written across the top of a page, as those corresponding consist of random facts about the band who seem to be steadily taking over the world. By no means is it a band that floods the radio waves of major broadcasters, but they are a popular musical outfit that are able to convert all those who listen into unrelenting followers.
The internet is flooded with praise about different genres tapped into on various LPs, and dissections of their 25 studio albums, 16 live albums, three compilations, and one remixed record occupy subreddits, YouTube comments and message boards. They have become their own religion, a spiritual awakening reserved only for those who are brave (or foolish) enough to listen. Today, as the band are set to headline Wide Awake festival in Brixton, I will infiltrate their following to find out what devilish delights are at play. It’s time we understand more how this obsessive cult operates, and the only way to do that is directly.
By the time I’ve read through all of my notes, I check the time. 10:04. The next station is London. There’s no turning back now.
10:41 – St Pancras International smells of the hustle and bustle of a busy city that hates itself but loves what others think of it. A mixture of slow and fast-paced people scatter walkways, escalators, and tube platforms, with half having meetings, brunch, and dates to get to while the other half are merely trying to work out where they should be going. The Victoria Line is too busy for comfort, but as it stops at Oxford Street, Victoria and Vauxhall, the carriage steadily becomes empty. Next stop, Brixton.
12:43 – “You must be crazy if you think this is going to work.” Chelsea, an old friend living nearby, tries to talk sense into me between sips of her margarita. “No one has ever listened to their music and come out without being brainwashed. Do you actually think it will be anything different for you?”
We sit in Pop, Brixton. It’s an outside food hall made up of an array of vendors inside shipping containers. Picnic tables are placed in the centre, soaking up the sun, and a screen towers above everyone, showing the build-up to the football. We’re surrounded by Manchester United fans, all with their attention diverted to either an overpriced pint or the screen. Neville thinks they have no chance; neither does Shearer.
“I’ll be fine,” I tell Chelsea. “It’s only music; how contagious could it be?” She spends the next hour trying to talk me out of my investigation, saying some things are better left alone, that it’s worth just letting music be music and mysteries remain as such. It’s all in vain, and after 90 minutes of drinking, I make my way through the streets of Brixton and head towards Brockwell Park.
15:02 – I go straight to the bar the minute I set foot inside the festival. I try not to look any punters in the eye, worried that whatever spell King Gizzard has on them might somehow impact me. Stood nearby, a man with an Italian accent asks for a beer, and a man with a Jamaican accent serves it to him. The whole place feels like a diverse blend of countries and cultures coming together in a culmination of sound. Two people from opposite sides of the world are joined for a moment in one of London’s most vibrant creative hubs. Maybe that’s the appeal in itself? The unifying nature of music and King Gizzard are now stretching so far worldwide that their mere mention is enough to feel a bond with those across land and sea. The beat transcends all borders.
16:04 – I take a sip of my second beer. Also drinking is the lead singer of Dry Cleaning. She heads to the stage with a bottle of prosecco in hand, her monotone voice riding indie instrumentation. Despite the absence of studio time, production, and mastering services, the band sounds almost exactly the same as they do on their albums.
It should be noted that King Gizzard is not the only band at this festival; Wide Awake is made up of a mixture of artists transcending genres across multiple stages. Though there is excitement for Dry Cleaning, as there is for the other acts heading out today, the T-shirts, beards, and long hair dotted around don’t lie. The majority are here for one thing and one thing only; they view the rest as filler.
The fans look and sound human, cheer like humans do, dance and sing in the same way we would, but their unmistakable lust for Gizzard is ripe. It fills the air like drinks do cups, and footballs do nets.
17:54 – Charlotte Adigery laughs uncontrollably throughout her set. It can only be assumed the cult has gotten to her, and these are the first stages in a hysteria-ridden conversion process.
18:17 – One of the biggest crowds is for Squid playing on the second stage. Punters push past one another in a bid for good spots as the band of five takes to the stage to play nu-metal-style beats alongside a trumpet with which the sound guy can’t seem to make heads or tails. During the opener, it’s all that can be heard; in the second song, it’s not there at all, and so on and so on.
A man with long brown dreadlocks talks about climbing to his friend a couple of rows in front. A red-faced man taps the locked reprobate on the shoulder, “If you wanna talk, do it somewhere else.” The red-faced man wears a King Gizzard shirt. It seems any encroachment on the sanctity of sound offends the followers.
19:03 – Young Fathers are a particular highlight. This is truly music to get lost in, and for a second, I think the cult might snap out of it. Nothing but energy from start to finish demands movement; people who know the words sing along, and those who don’t google the setlist so they can learn later. The upbeat nature of the music, paired with the rhythmic call-and-response style of the band, is incredibly unifying. This is a beat that defies borders, as multiple cultures, styles, and sounds seem to be at play when putting together the intricate music of Young Fathers.
Songs like ‘In My View’ get people dancing. For some, it’s a simple two-step; others throw themselves into it more. Hips start shaking, hands waving, and drinks are thrown. These movements are only exaggerated as the set develops and new songs creep into the speakers. One of the more modern singles, ‘I Saw’, stands out, a song that seems to convey feelings of both joy and disdain within the heavily emotive delivery of the words. More hips and arms fly, the beat gets louder, the bass fuzzier, and movements more frantic.
It feels like the crowd is less an entity of individuals and, instead, one living and breathing thing, growing more energetic; the arms continue to flail until one hits me on the head and knocks me unconscious.
20:12 – Usually, when people are knocked out, their dreams come in the form of revelation, but mine is formed of Slowdive. Their serene and tranquil sound holds my subconsciousness steady as I come around at the second stage as the bands depart. People begin setting up for the Byrne’s Night tribute act. The crowd is tiny. I wonder where everyone is and then realise the time.
21:00 – The crowd that formed at the main stage were like sinners to confession. They look human, they sound human, but they move with tenacity and purpose, unlike anything I have ever seen. The DJ set, which plays in between bands, means nothing. These footsteps, shoulders, and forearms that push past and through are unlike those of your fellow beings. Hair is predominantly long on heads, chins and legs, and regardless of how funk-heavy the DJ insists on being, the atmosphere is suffocating.
The crowd grows more and more, the atmosphere continues to build, and the altar becomes too unpredictable to make a note of. Left, right, forwards, back, any chance of free will dissipate in the mesh of bodies, which are free-flowing until the lights dim and the band comes to the stage. Their leaders are draped in light, ethereal in their entrance, and the followers stand to attention. There is a gentle hum of feedback over the microphone, drum sticks click together. “One two one two…” and all is black.
00:00 – As I lay in my hotel room bed, all I have is time to reflect on the headline set. At first, the hype surrounding King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard was slightly lost on me. They were a hard rock band, plain and simple, heavy in their approach to music, yet oddly an outfit that sat on the sidelines of the metal community. A small sunflower seed of a man sang from the depths of his lungs, and the audience was a constant wave of bodies as people crowd-surfed, moshed and danced.
It wasn’t until later in the set that the obsession started to make sense. It all comes back to the unifying nature of sound. There were different genres throughout King Gizzard’s set, something which their fanbase takes pride in, but something which, again, I have never been able to make sense of. Why settle for a band that does loads of genres well when you can instead have loads of bands that do a specific genre exceptionally? But again, it started to make sense as the set went on.
You can’t assign a specific sound to King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Doing so would be doing them a disservice, as they are a band that champions music as a whole and, in doing so, want to champion the different forms it comes in. This means injecting a heavy sound with a variety of tones (electronic music, blues, rock, it’s all in there). It also means assigning narrative, stepping back from a song and viewing an album as an entire project, giving their records a lore that fans can engage with. They are a culmination of different theories and types of music, and in their celebration of it, they attract an unsurprising number of people who equally revel in that celebration.
It doesn’t matter what you’re into; there is something within this band you can latch on to and hold close. They are incredibly talented musicians, brandishing their musical ability in a way that stretches beyond just the confines of the band. That worldwide approach is drip-fed into the crowd, and their reach goes across the world as a result. This isn’t a cult; it’s a party that people are reluctant to leave, and amongst them now is me.
11:47 – I make my way back to St Pancras International. The sun still shines, and when the birds chirp, I have a newfound appreciation for the melody contained within.
