King Of Fuzz

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are Melbourne’s psych-record-writing machines, having popped out four full-length records in just two years. Their latest and their fifth is I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, an LP recorded in the aftermath of winning the $50K Carlton Dry Global Music Grant.

“I guess the most overriding theme of the record is a lack of faith in the world,” says Mackenzie. “Or a kind of human irony of where we fit in the cosmos. It’s mostly kind of depression lyrically. But a fair few of the songs are about climate change or the world or just the modern industrial age. That’s probably the main underlying theme. Mind control, and yeah. Do I sound really silly talking about this sort of thing? It’s hard to sum up a record in terms of lyrics because it’s varying. They’re sort of the things.

“I’m kind of worried about humanity so that comes through in the lyrics I guess. I also don’t like to take things too seriously so there’s still a lot of tongue-in-cheek stuff on the record and there’s still an element of it taking the piss out of itself.”

And that’s the way of King Gizz. It’s not-so-serious serious psych-rock music from seven musicians who’ve each got a project or two on the go at any one time.

“The main thing with this one was it’s the first time we’ve done the traditional getting everyone together, rehearsing songs together, and then recording them all together. We’ve never really done that before. So we did that for a whole record.

“It’s quite dense, it’s dynamic, there’s loud parts, and there’s more subtle moments. What else would I say? It’s kind of apocalyptic. I don’t know.”

Mackenzie says they were working on I’m In Your Mind Fuzz for six to eight months, starting in November; including some time spent recording to an eight-track in a house up in the mountains in New York State. But how do they manage to make so many albums in such a short space of time?

“I don’t know. I know it seems so tight from the outside but it’s not that tight. Still plenty of time to do normal stuff. It’s just doing stuff at your own pace I guess. If we meticulously made records as perfectionists and rehearsed for our shows as much as we probably should then it would probably be a lot more tight [laughs].

“The actual time commitment for everyone else is pretty small. It’s just get together for a few rehearsals and learn some tracks together and do some overdubs together and do overdubs in your own time and working it out that way. We spent some time together in this house… That was a time when we could all get together and work on this album and work on things together and we basically finished it off up there.”

The record’s out this Friday and Mackenzie and his band of merry men have already started thinking about their next record. “I’ve got a pretty clear idea about what I want it to be like. Kind of a bunch of songs written. It’s far from a thing yet for sure.”

WHAT: I’m In Your Mind Fuzz (Flightless/Remote Control)