TRACK BY TRACK: Take A Trip Through Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ New Record

BIG DIJON

I’ve always found the opening track to an album is usually the best indicator of what to expect for a record. So naturally, I wanted to go against that and provide the listener with a flavour, more of a weird welcoming piece, an eerie, unfamiliar yet warm movement. 

It needed to be quirky and engaging, jarring and unexpected. I thought if I could set up the first minute of the album to sound strange and exciting rather than tonally consistent, then that’s the concept for the record, a theme of unexpected, deliberately chaotic, childish joy, as vibrant as possible.

The first sentence says, “Blink and you’ll miss it,” hinting at the fast pace of the record to come. I wanted the lyrics in this album to all work as one narrative, oddly aware of itself, linking the song ideas together to form a heavy weekend without a linear progression, similar to how you foggily try to reimagine each night's different escapades on Monday morning. 

My album routine was wake up, tea, cigarette, wait for the bottle shop to open then record all day, it was actually really fun. I had just recovered from pneumonia so I had this new lease on life, wanting to go out and explore Perth again after being away for so long on tour, I wanted to capture that excitement and treat the whole album as one big come-up. Start really minimal, end minimal in the same fashion. So I started with a glitched-out acoustic guitar, slowly it comes to life with the introduction of violins, cello and violas until it explodes at the end with a low sub to complete the frequency wall and crescendo like you’ve reached your peak and are ready for an adventure. The vocals saying “Here it comes” to indicate the albums about to take off from that point. I had a voice recording from my friend Mike (Dikel) Wyatt that I snuck in the end of the track to pick the energy up before it leads into Tally-Ho. “Surrender to the render” he repeats, what a great line. Give in and let go, enjoy.

TALLY-HO

Carrying on the album theme of spangled encounters, Tally-Ho re-enacts the classic fable of late-night c talks on copious amounts of chemical enthusiasm. I wanted the lyrics to feel sporadic and impulsive, kinda like a conversation you’d have with a mate after a night out where you just want to debate about something but most of your synapses are already fried so you’re both blurting out gibberish, but really giving it a good go at sounding formal. A sober third party might assume you’re both morons but between the constant waves of inebriated dialogue, you feel like you’ve activated God mode and are only a few online classes away from becoming a favoured politician that will solve all the world's problems. 

This is where the album really cranks into gear, it’s the first point an entire band appears. Classic ‘70s guitar sound with an uplifting shuffle. It’s from this point the pace of the album is set.

Tally-Ho is a brand of rolling papers here in Australia for anyone wondering that resides outside the kingdom of venom. There’s usually the remnants of a poorly ripped packet sat on my desk, but it fits the theme. Now the crunchy guitar tone is set, production flavours in place, the theme of the album underway, it’s time to keep lifting up.

SAWTOOTH MONKFISH

This track is about having a moment of clarity, a rare encounter when everything lines up perfectly and for the briefest of moments you feel like you’re glimpsing at perfection, you feel alive and it’s real.

I wanted the feeling of this track to sound like a retro Japanese arcade game, kinda 8-bit but heavy. I wrote Sawtooth and Tripolasaur a day apart from each other and planned for one to step up into the next. I really tried to think about every track's BPM and how it affected the sound of what’s to follow, I hadn’t done that previously and made sure with Shyga I was constantly checking the flow of the album.

It’s weird how some songs sound slow by themselves but juxtapose it with another song and they can shoot off if you’ve set it up with something acutely different beforehand. There’s a lot of intentional shorter tracks on the record, aiming to boost the song following directly after to maintain that feeling of constantly moving forward and upward.

TRIPOLASAUR

“I’m getting used to waking up and feeling rough”, that was our tour mantra. Everyone’s been there, that one night too big that you feel the need to go full Garry Sobers afterwards. The answer is obvious to the listener but our poor little drunk friend can’t understand why he keeps feeling like shit when he’s drinking each day.

The little drop after the second verse is one of my favourite parts of the album, the build swirling around and finally crashing into one fiercely repetitive note, felt like a Jack White thing to do. I was really happy with the chorus, a velvet morning seemed a nice way to describe how it must feel for a tip-top shaped-up health nut who glides out of bed at the crack of dawn and is 100% comfortable in body and mind. I found alcohol was definitely not a good way to reach that state, but at least you get into bed feeling great.

MR PRISM

After our last tour of Europe, I had a plethora of reasons to need to see a doctor. First, he thought I had tonsillitis so prescribed me penicillin which didn’t help at all, I did Falls Festival over New Year’s and barely had a lung to cough up, turns out I had pneumonia. I was pushing through on all sorts of meds until someone offered me a slug of marching powder and I realised no matter how sick I’d ever be I could never turn one down. Someone wittingly said ‘nobody fears the nose beers’ and Mr Prism (my sickly-fun-fuelled-fiend of an alter ego) was born. 

THE TERRORS

The term given to the cocktail of dejected emotions that usually occur between Sunday night and Tuesday morning as an unwanted side effect following a long and debaucherous weekend. What goes up eventually plummets into mere oblivion, the highs of infinity to the dark cold clutches of death.

I wanted to write a track that paid homage to where Porn Crumpets began, back in our drug-ridden cave of a share house at Hector Street. There was a solid group of us on Centrelink, either studying or pretending to work, waiting for our pay-check to arrive so we could pickle the membrane and substitute reality for a while, very much in the name of science. The classic Australian coming of age saga.

I wanted the song to surge maniacally and feel like a chaotic adventure that viscously bulldozes its way through to the listener. High intensity, good gremlins, thanks for coming. The more I penned the more I realised I was still waking up like my 20-year-old prototype. 

It felt like most of last year on tour we'd repeatedly wake up in a state of Groundhog Day, tired limbs and weary souls maintaining extroverted livers for months on end, it was all self-inflicted so there's nobody to blame but ourselves. It was the commitment to routine I was more impressed with, how easily mayhem flows, shapes, contorts, it slowly becomes warming, like a shit friend you keep choosing to hang out with cause they're reliable, accompanied with a daily migraine you enjoy for nostalgic purposes, my slither of homely consistencies. Wow, I went dark! 

Probably why It needed an uplifting chorus, something climactic, a burst of endorphins that all good trips encounter, a smiling glimmer of hope reminding us all "everything will be ok". 

HATS OFF TO THE GREEN BINS

This track is the halfway mark of the album or the beginning of the central medley that connects into Pukebox. The songs about cleaning up our share-house before a rent inspection. It feels like such a boring subject that had a nice layer of humour about it. Our garden was an absolute mess, the grass was three-foot high and my housemate collects verge collection rubbish, don’t ask me why but the garden literals looks like a tip. He has about 10 lawn mowers that don’t work hidden in the long grass which is pretty ironic. So rent inspections are usually something to dread. I researched who invented the lawnmower and good old Edwin Beard Budding came up, what a name. He also invented the adjustable spanner. He looks like such a gentleman I think I said “hats off to you, sir” in a rich Victorian-era accent, then I thought “hats off to the green bins”!

GLITTER BUG

Glitter Bug is one of my favourite tracks from this album, the way it transitions from Green Bins and segues into More Glitter gives me the warm fuzzies. My girlfriend at the time loved to eccentrically dress up for parties, her friends would often have themed events that required heaps of makeup, body painting and a fuck tonne of glitter. I’d always wake up in the morning with glitter in my teeth, in my hair, ears, literally everywhere, and it’s near impossible to remove so most days I’d rock up to work at the pub sparkling. I thought it was a good starting point for a track and then tie that into tour life, the same repetitive weekends at home mixed with the daily routines of hungover travelling, yearning for an escape.

I spent a long time working on Glitter Bug, there’s been about 20 different versions of the tune. I’d originally planned to release it with Whatchamacallit but didn’t feel like it was finished. Once I discovered the mellotron it was an absolute game-changer. I was plastering warped string samples everywhere, probably in excess but I loved how warm it made everything feel. The end is Ben Caddy on violins which adds a nice uplifting sense of realism, something classic to add that vintage flavour. I never knew how to finish the song but as soon as I found the flute patch on the old ‘tron it felt complete.

MORE GLITTER

Me trying to showcase the Mellotron and transition smoothly in Pukebox.

PUKEBOX

Pukebox was the first song I used as a reference track while creating the flavour for the record. I used the lyrics and early ‘70s lo-fi production style to build the identity of Shyga! It’s the first time I’ve used that technique.

I’d had the idea of the track for a while but I never thought it fit the style of our previous albums. I spent the beginning of the year dissecting the track right down to its core, finding out what worked and how many varying melodies I could fit into the guitars and vocals while still sounding cohesive enough as one piece of music. Once I was satisfied with the guitars I used the tone as a template along with the vocal patches to make the rest of the album feel unified. 

I was really happy with the final version as the verse seems like it steps up three or four times before the personality of the song really flourishes. I wanted the vocals to reflect that movement so I wrote the first part in first person, talking about my time at home drinking moonshine and wondering who else was doing the same. Then I compared that in the second verse with a secondary version of myself who I wrote about as a character, a little bit lost, waking up hungover in random cities trying to find a meaning while it sailed right past me. Both unaware of each other’s existence while slowly going mad through repetitive consumption. The whole album is built upon that theme but it’s with Pukebox I feel the album’s character is showcased best. 

MUNDUNGUS

In a previous quote, I said: “Mundungus is the rare post-tour recovery period where all our close friends and family assume we’re crippled with alcoholism, burdened with lives of social estrangement and are far too disillusioned to foresee our self-destructive tendencies''. Turns out they were right, haha. I think it was this idea that set the whole of Shyga in motion, have an album where every song is adding to a bender of a week and the aftermath of those events. I’d say it’s the closest narration of tour life I can give.

This was the bastard child of the record for a while, it didn’t fit anywhere. I eventually chose to cut over half of the older songs I had in place and make Mundungus and Pukebox the centre of the ideation. Once I had that sound and concept worked out, it was much easier to flow into the record, highly enjoyable as well. It was nice trying to translate that, you can hear the excitement bouncing in Mundungus, such a fun one to play live as well.

MANGO TERRARIUM

After a good three or four months of trying to settle on a drink of preference, I discovered Matso Mango beer, maybe the most deliciously refreshing alcoholic beverage to sink on a hot summer's day. My brother described it as what a bee would taste when it extracts nectar from a flower. Cartons were on special at Dan Murphy’s so I stocked up heavily. My studio was covered in bottles giving the room a delightfully fruity scent. I don’t know why I didn’t clean up, maybe laziness, maybe I was transfixed on working, I remember walking in one morning thinking what a state, “I’ve been living in a mango terrarium,” and it pretty much was my own little glass world.

This track feels like the strongest nod to classic ‘70s rock. A real good foot-tapping shuffle. The outro is my personal favourite moment on the album, I still get a little tingle when I listen to it which is nice. I wanted it to feel like it was constantly stepping up and spent ages trying to work out that progression. I found a nice arpeggiated chord structure which I worked around and kept warping the guitars up an octave until all the dogs on the street would start yelling. The talking in the background is an old ‘60s documentary on how terrariums are made that Rish found, then he reversed that and compressed the beejees out of it. It felt like a nice nod to The Beatles.

ROUND THE CORNER

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

THE TALE OF GURNEY GRIDMAN

And for my last trick! Mr Gurney Gridman. This one’s got a pretty funny story, when we were recording the drums at Tone City with Sam Ford, he’d constantly be hating on us (in a friendly way) that all the songs were in 16th note triplets, which if anyone’s spent a bit of time quantising drums before is a bit of a fuck around. Anyway, he told us he’d been getting a jaw ache from grinding his teeth while editing the album, so we aptly renamed our dear friend Sam to Gurney Gridman.

I wanted this track to change as much as possible, to feel like it’s got multiple lives with varying personalities, almost like a conclusion to a big night out, the hazy memory of what’s happened and is still happening while eventually ending in a comedown, as all big weekends do. It felt like a nice symmetrical way to end the record.

Listen to the full album below!