Sketches of Brunswick East Review

Sketches of Brunswick East is the latest album from Australian psych-rock band King GIzzard and the Lizard Wizard. On this latest project, they collaborated with Mild High Club. Sketches is a chilled-out jazz album more reminiscent of King Gizzard’s Paper Mache Dream Balloon. Only this time, King Gizzard has had more experience with fast psych-rock as seen in Murder of the Universe, and Nonagon Infinity. This resulted in experimentation with odd time signatures at faster speeds, and a more polished feel to most of the tracks on this album.

Another contrast from Paper Mache Dream Balloon would be on Sketches, instead of a stripped down feel to it, the instrumentation is much more grand with even stronger drums and layered guitars, topped off with relaxed synths and/or booming pianos supplied by Mild High Club. Adding these mellow, jazzy instrumentals to singer Stu McKenzie’s coveted falsetto vocals led to a truly amazing swirl of psych and jazz. With vocal support from Alex Brettin of Mild High Club on tracks like Tezeta and Rolling Stoned, Sketches never fails to surprise you.

After forming their extensive discography of 11 full-length albums, King Gizzard’s experience and versatility shines through. The advanced and layered instrumentation, classic King Gizzard mid-fi production, topped off with Mild High Club, creates arguably THE best King GIzzard album to date, and one of my personal favorite albums to date.