King Gizzard’s sixth album, Quarters!, is a sprawling suite of four songs that sees the shapeshifting septet turn their focus to jazz-inflected acid rock. Each of the four tracks on Quarters! clocks in at exactly 10:10 – while the significance of this is unclear, the influences of LA Woman era Doors and Houses of the Holy era Zeppelin certainly inform these sprawling, proggy excursions. Album opener the River drifts along in an upbeat haze and the other three tracks follow suit – all easy, spacious jams over pulsating jazz rhythms that ebb and flow quite naturally. Each song finds an agreeable groove to inhabit and sticks to it, filling the space with intricately woven guitar textures and rhythmic interplay before drifting into the next jam as fluidly as a change of seasons. A hard left turn for the band which saw them nominated for Best Jazz Album at the 2015 Aria Music Awards, Quarters! is listless and meandering in the best way, 40:40 of pure psychedelic day-dream.
Pete Whelan 