Mottled Lizard

Just under a month after delivering their award-winning 2016 album Nonagon Infinity, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard took the stage at San Francisco’s The Independent for a set both wildly frenetic and meticulously executed. In one of their final club gigs before bursting onto the international scene—soon selling out amphitheaters and headlining festivals—the Melbourne septet laid down a breakneck performance that, in the words of SF Weekly, “made every organ ache just right.” Newly unearthed by ATO Records, Live in San Francisco ’16 captures an extraordinary moment in the band’s increasingly storied history, a 13-song spectacular likely to leave every listener awestruck and adrenalized.

Released in December 1970, King Crimson's third studio album, Lizard, is often viewed as an outlier in the pioneering British prog outfit's nearly half-century discography. It's not easily grouped with 1969's stunning In the Court of the Crimson King debut and 1970 follow-up In the Wake of Poseidon, and along with 1971's Islands it's considered a transitional release on the band's path toward the relative stability of the Larks' Tongues in Aspic (1973), Starless and Bible Black (1974), and Red (1974) trilogy. Plus, the Lizard sessions were difficult and the core group lineup acrimoniously collapsed immediately afterward, as bandleader/guitarist Robert Fripp, with lyricist Peter Sinfield, continued brave efforts to save King Crimson from disintegrating as the group's lengthy history was just getting underway.