Earlier this month I caught up with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard‘s Stu Mackenzie to talk about their new album I’m In Your Mind Fuzz coming out at the end of the month, recording at Daptone Records in New York, their upcoming performances at CMJ (this week!) and their recent trip to China – plus we reflect on their American experiences at Austin Psych Festival, opening for You Am I in Toronto and much more…
We’ve got a record to talk about, so let’s jump in and talk about it. I’ve been playing it very loud here in the office, several times today – as it’s meant to be played – so tell me a little bit about when the work on this record started?
I guess this record has come together over a pretty long time. Over the course of this whole past year. We’ve been playing some of these songs really early on… maybe even at the end of last year. It’s come together pretty slowly. Some of these songs were even being recorded when we were finishing off our last record Oddments. We recorded half the tracks in Melbourne, and half in the US. We did a lot of the recording and the mixing ourselves. So the creative process for this one was quite long…
Having seen you guys quite a few times in the last 12 months, I had felt like I’d heard some of these tracks before… of course though you play with your music quite a bit in the live environment…
Yeah absolutely. We want to make the song the best recording it can be, and then we want it to be the best live performance it can be. We see them as seperate entities.
How does that play into the way you record? Do you track things seperately or together?
We’ve done things in lots of different ways in the past, but for this record we tracked everything together. This record is everyone playing together. And then there’s things overdubbed – the flutes, the harmonicas… the fiddly kind of stuff… and some of the vocals – but the majority of vibe of the track is al; there, it’s all a take, it’s all a matter of us getting together and rehearsing and learning the songs together and recording it that way. It’s kind of the traditional way of recording an album, but it’s the first time we’ve really worked that way. I loved worked that way.
With your sort of music especially, it must have been very difficult to recreate the vibe you guys have live when you weren’t tracking it together.
Yeah I think that with this record, we all wanted to do a record that was fun to play live. That was a big part of it. With Float Along and Oddments, the recordings were all mostly done in bedrooms and little sheds, with different combinations of people. They were recordings before they were performances. I believe in doing that as well. But when it came to perfoming both of those records, it proved to be really difficult for most of the tracks.That inspired us to do the opposite thing with this record I think.
And of course being on the road together so much now – especially over the last 12 months – compared to back in the day where you’d be doing the odd weekend here and there.
Yeah, that’s the thing – you kind of feel like you need to make a record that works for the way the band is right now. That was a really big part of this album for sure.
Talk me through recording in the US, too – you spent quite a bit of time over there this year.
We recorded it at the Daptone studios in Brooklyn, it was really really cool. Traditionally there’s a soul vibe there, but we had some friends of friends there so we got in touch and the studio is amazing. It’s all analogue, there are no computers anywhere, you can cut it straight to tape… ironically the heavier, rockier tracks we recorded there, while the soulier, more chilled out ones we did in Melbourne… We’d recorded them before we left and we thought the record was heading that way, but by the time we got to the States and we had the rest of the songs come together, it’s what we ended up with. I guess we had a lot of pent up energy from touring so much.
When we last spoke, you were just about to head off to the States for the first time, and you kicked things off with Austin Psych Fest…
Yeah that was amzing, that was such a cool festival. That was actually our very first show in the States. We were super jetlagged and walked off a plane from Australia onto the stage, into this trippy festival. It was a real trip.
Did you get to see much music while you were there? I remember you saying you couldn’t stick around for long.
We were there for the day. Luckily there was a lot of cool stuff on, we got to see The Zombies and Woods… The Black Lips… there was quite a bit of good stuff on. There’s this really cool ranch set up. Super cool.
From there you went up to Canadian Music Week where Tim Rogers was front row for your performance at The Aussie BBQ – him following your band with You Am I…
Good old Timmy. We hung out with those guys quite a bit that festival. We saw them play a few times and I think they came to a few of our performances. So we bonded in Canada. It was good.
It’s got to be pretty cool to be in Canada, opening for You Am I on a stage where apparently the Stones have played…
Yeah, that’s true. That was really cool.
And it seems things are going well for you guys over there. I interviewed Zoe Kravitzwho said she saw you in New York for starters, and said you killed it. And now I understand you’re about to head back over…
Yeah we’re about to leave to do a support tour for White Fence, for two weeks, and then we do CMJ… I think after we land, there are 17 shows in the first 14 days. So it’s pretty daunting. Giving me anxiety just thinking about doing that. Especially just jumping off a plane. It’s indirect too – going to take us like 26 hours to get there. Probably get two hours sleep in total.
Good luck with that!
Yeah, exactly. *laughs*
But you must be looking forward to it
Yeah absolutely. And CMJ will be good too. We spent quite a bit of time in New York last time, we became locals.
You’ve got your favourite spots then I’m guessing to eat at, to go out…
Yeah, I guess so. It’s such a big place. But we made a few buddies over there who guided us in the right direction. There are plenty of Aussie expats over there. Always friendly people and good bars to go to.
And you just wrapped up an Australian tour, how did that all go?
Yeah it was great, really fun. I don’t even know what to say about it. We were mostly playing the new stuff off this record and then we went to China, which was funny. It was just bizarre. We were there for two days, played one show in Beijing. It was weird and cool. This festival called Modern Sky. Mostly Chinese bands, with a few internationals…
Did you feel you fit in?
Not really. Kind of stuck out. But that’s alright.
That’s not really too unusual though is it?
Yeah I think we stick out anywhere we go travelling. Seven, six foot tall guys with long hair… pretty weird looking. It gets a bit embarassing travelling around.
Did you get a lot of random people wanting photos with you? As a long haired, weird looking dude myself, I was getting that when I was travelling around China.
Yeah absolutely. I think they thought we might have been Hollywood movie stars or something. They would have been very disappointed when they found out who we were.
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I’m In Your Mind Fuzz is released on Friday, October 31st.
