Flying Microtonal Banana is the first of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s proposed five albums to be released in 2017. Currently taking the form of a septet, the Australian group is of the prolific and relentlessly experimenting sort, with the musicians using various strategies to crack open their cosmic surf-boogie, such as on the rustic, acoustic outsiderness of 2015’s Paper Måché Dream Balloon and last year’s looping Möbius strip, Nonagon Infinity. As the title indicates, the Aussies have discovered microtonality here, embracing alternate tunings as a tried-and-true harmonic method of channeling different vibrations. While a sense of the other permeates the nine tracks, from the strange hypnotic breaks of “Melting” to the groan-drones of “Nuclear Fusion,” it’s often more of a mood than a transformative practice for the band’s music, like a more exotica-obsessed version of Thee Oh Sees. Sometimes, the faraway vibes take over, as on the hand drums and snaking horns and rushing winds of the title track, but more often, the band leans into its relentless pulse, uncovering a playfulness in the type of Krautrock-influenced rhythms that usually get delivered in a stonefaced manner. Though some of the material plays more like grooves  than songs (like the disc opening “Rattlesnake”), a sense of fun takes the day, as when the band plows into a spaghetti-western on “Billabong Valley,” the mysteries of the spheres to be revealed right after the ending credits.