Our day 8 song for New Zealand Music Month 2020 comes from Dunedin hyper-active psych-surf turbo-prog band Koizilla, and a typically over-achieving precision riff-fest called “Prooble”.
Koizilla are Zac Nicolls (guitar and vocals), Hilary Faul (flute, vocals, keyboards, percussion), Connor Blackie (bass, vocals) and Josh Nicolls (drums). The band have always seemed to have some accidental early 1970s German psych-prog sound in their skillfully executed blend of riff-rock and prog-rock precision. But this song sounds more like a manic version of Anglo-French ensemble Gong.
Koizilla’s adventurous risk-taking glee of melodic multi-instrumental synchronicity avoids the joyless mechanical precision of musical theory mathematics exercises that prog-rock forms can sometimes amount to. It’s fun, and if it sounds exhausting to listen to, imagine what it’s like to play.