Regurgitator’s Ben Ely To Drop Solo Record

Regurgitator bassist, songwriter and solo artist Ben Ely is preparing to release a new solo album under the moniker Ben Ely & the Mungo Fungo Band, Zargon Oscillator Prose.

The new solo album follows three previous solo releases from Ely: 2015’s Goodbye Machine, 2017’s Strange Tales Of Drugs & Lost Love, and 2021’s The Golden Path.

Zargon Oscillator Prose is preceded by the single, Crazy Time, which is out now. Ely commented about the single in a press release, “Crazy Time, like all of our songs, evolved out of improvisations.

“We wrote the first half of the song, and the extended ending took over a year to finish. We tried so many ideas, though, in the end, simplicity won the race! We are so lucky to have a functioning planet, and we need to take good care of it. It’s a crazy time to be alive, alright.”

You can listen to Crazy Time here ahead of the album’s release on Friday, 10 November, via Valve/MGM.

In addition to releasing his new solo music with the Mungo Fungo Band, Ely will open for You Am I on their upcoming tour dates in Queensland and will launch new tracks on Sunday, 5 November, at Lefty’s Music Hall on Petrie Terrace, Brisbane. You can find tickets for that show here.

“It was pretty crazy, looking back on Brisbane in that era,” Ely recalled in a The Music interview after releasing Strange Tales Of Drugs & Lost Love. “If you were different in this town at that time, you were not very respected by the law, and out in general at concerts, there were a lot of skinhead gangs and punk gangs around, there was a lot of violence, and if you were kind of an effeminate man with long blue hair or something, you're going to attract a bit of attention.”

Earlier this year, Regurgitator celebrated 25 years of Unit with a national tour. The album, which hit #5 on the ARIA Albums Chart upon its release, was certified triple Platinum in Australia and won five categories at the 1998 ARIA Awards, including Best Alternative Album.