GUM and King Gizzard's Ambrose Kenny-Smith announce collaborative album, III Times

The forthcoming album is the debut release on King Gizzard’s newly-announced p(doom) records. As described by King Gizzard, p(doom) records is a label “to put out our own records and our friends’ too. If you all keep listening to ’em, we’ll keep making ’em.”

Watson and Kenny-Smith first met at the bar in the hazy hours after Tame Impala played the legendary Eureka Hotel in Kenny-Smith’s hometown of Geelong, Victoria in 2009. But it wasn’t until Kenny-Smith’s bands came to prominence a couple of years later that the bond between these groups was formed. The roots of Ill Times lay in an instrumental Watson had recorded that he loved but couldn’t find a home for in Pond or GUM by itself.

The track haunted him, enough that he ended up discussing it at some festival Pond and King Gizz were both playing somewhere on the planet one summer. Watson DM’d Kenny-Smith the track, along with a link to “Magic Mountain.” “Jay said that was the vibe he wanted,” Kenny-Smith continues, “and I’m a big Eric Burdon try-hard, so I was into it.”

Kenny-Smith wrote lyrics and some new melodies to the song, now titled “Old Transistor Radio,” recorded his parts and DM’d them to Watson. Watson loved what he heard, and then sent Kenny-Smith another track to work on. For Watson, part of the thrill lay in exploring styles of music he’d loved all his life, but played all too rarely. “I was excited to explore stuff our other bands hadn’t really touched on before,” Watson says. “Funk, soul… groove-based music.”

Tracklist:

1. Dud
2. Ill Times
3. Minor Setback
4. Fool For You
5. Resilience
6. Powertrippn’
7. Old Transistor Radio
8. Emu Rock
9. Marionette
10. The Gloater