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**King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Quarters! ★★★★☆**

By 2015, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard had already established themselves as Australia's most prolific and unpredictable psych-rock export, but nobody could have predicted the audacious experiment that would become *Quarters!* Coming off the back of their breakthrough *I'm In Your Mind Fuzz* and the garage-rock rampage of *Oddments*, the Melbourne septet decided to throw their fans the ultimate curveball: an album consisting of exactly four tracks, each precisely 10 minutes and 10 seconds long. It was a conceptual straitjacket that would have crushed lesser bands, but for King Gizzard, it became the catalyst for some of their most adventurous and cohesive songwriting.

The album opens with "The River," a hypnotic journey that flows like its namesake through multiple movements and moods. Beginning with Stu Mackenzie's distinctive vocals floating over a deceptively simple guitar motif, the track gradually builds into a sprawling epic that showcases the band's ability to create genuine tension and release within their extended compositions. The song's central hook – a cascading guitar line that seems to tumble endlessly downstream – becomes almost mantra-like in its repetition, drawing listeners into King Gizzard's peculiar brand of meditative chaos. It's perhaps the most accessible entry point into the album, serving as a perfect gateway drug for newcomers to the band's more experimental tendencies.

"Infinite Rise" takes the concept of musical expansion literally, constructing what feels like an endless spiral staircase of sound. The track demonstrates the band's jazz-fusion influences more prominently than previous efforts, with intricate interplay between the dual drummers and a bass line that anchors increasingly complex harmonic explorations. Cookie Dawson and Michael Cavanagh's percussion work here is particularly noteworthy, creating polyrhythmic patterns that shift and evolve without ever losing the pocket. The song builds to a genuinely euphoric climax that justifies every minute of its patient construction.

The album's second half begins with "God Is In The Rhythm," which strips things back to their most primal elements. Built around a thunderous, almost tribal drum pattern, the track explores the spiritual dimensions of repetition and groove. Mackenzie's lyrics, delivered with shamanic intensity, blur the lines between the sacred and the profane while the band locks into one of their most devastating grooves. It's King Gizzard at their most physically compelling, the kind of track that transforms festival crowds into writhing masses of converted believers.

Closing track "Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer" serves as the album's most melancholic moment, a sprawling meditation on isolation and transcendence. The song's patient build mirrors the album's overall arc, starting from sparse, almost ambient beginnings before erupting into a cathartic finale that ranks among the band's most emotionally powerful moments. The interplay between Joey Walker and Cook Craig's guitars creates vast sonic landscapes that feel both desolate and beautiful, while the rhythm section provides a steady heartbeat that keeps the song grounded even as it reaches for the cosmos.

What makes *Quarters!* so successful is how the time constraint forced King Gizzard to abandon their usual kitchen-sink approach in favor of focused, purposeful composition. Each track feels like a complete journey rather than an extended jam, with clear narrative arcs and careful attention to dynamics. The album also benefits from Jason Galea's typically excellent artwork – a surreal landscape that perfectly captures the record's exploratory spirit.

In the context of King Gizzard's ever-expanding catalog, *Quarters!* stands as a crucial bridge between their early garage-rock period and the genre-hopping madness that would follow. While it may not have the immediate impact of *Nonagon Infinity* or the conceptual ambition of *Murder of the Universe*, it represents the band at their most patient and mature. The album proved that King Gizzard could master restraint just as effectively as chaos, setting the stage for future experiments in everything from microtonal music to thrash metal.

Nearly a decade later, *Quarters!* remains a testament to the power of creative constraints. In an era of shortened attention spans and playlist culture, King Gizzard created an album that demands complete immersion, rewarding patient listeners with some of their most rewarding and emotionally resonant music. It's an album that grows with each listen, revealing new details