When it comes to dauntingly voluminous discographies, Aussie psychedelic jam outfit King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard currently enjoys the mantle of the most staggeringly prolific contemporary band.
Formed in 2010, currently the Melbourne prog gang has 27 studio albums under their belt, in addition to near double the amount of live records and a healthy smattering of EPs, dropping as many as five LPs in 2017 alone. They also like to rinse any respectable wordcount on occasion, titling 2023’s lysergic metal conjuring with the snappy PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation.
Many artists before them have boasted healthy album numbers. Across a nearly 50-year recording career, old ‘Man in Black’ country legend Johnny Cash dropped a whopping 68 studio albums, including his posthumous releases, excluding his vast litany of live records. Beating him by a country mile is the ‘Red Headed Stranger’ Willie Nelson, who’s amassed an incredible 103 albums, again ignoring concert efforts.
Staking a concrete claim at a likely record is Greek singer and Eurovision 1963 contender Nana Mouskouri, who has released an estimated 450 albums across 13 different languages, with her 2004 retrospective box set Collection Intégrale holding a hefty 34 CDs.
In the indie world, Manchester post-punks The Fall reached a respectable 31 albums, and Ohio’s Guided by Voices have totalled 40 since 1987’s Devil Between My Toes debut, but while there’s certainly an artistic thread that binds their work, neither can sincerely be classed as a universe oeuvre.
(Credits: Far Out)
Truly boasting a universe of work, George Clinton’s Afrofuturist space ensemble Parliament-Funkadelic jointly dropped 24 psychedelic soul records, as well as orbiting projects from associates and bandmembers Eddie Hazel, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, and The Brides of Funkenstein.
Following an intergalactic narrative, P-Funk cosmology encompasses everything from America’s spiritual turmoil and stirring Black consciousness, toward a Mothership UFO, lethal bop guns, and the sinister efforts of one Sir Nose D Voidoffunk’s threat to the potent and virile forces of funk.
Including the massive grey area between his solo work and that of former band The Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa similarly boasts a multi-coloured and skewed universe of characters and motifs across his 63 official studio albums, surrounded by an exhaustive amount of live albums, pouring his disdain of authority and mainstream education into an ocean of conceptual works that all channel his allegiance of the 1960s freak scene over any hippy loyalties.
Standing head and shoulders above any competition is Californian guitar noodler Buckethead. While only counting 31 studio albums, the masked KFC mega-maestro has dropped a staggering 380 studio albums in his notable Pike series, from 2011’s It’s Alive right up until this month’s Seekers Are Never Lost. Not to mention double that as Pike live cuts, with each album usually of 30 minutes runtime and featuring a bespoke sequential number similar to a comic book.
With no signs of slowing down with Pike or any of his other ventures, it’s not likely Buckhead’s discography count will be beaten anytime soon.
