Earth by the Stars

This group of seven Australians including two drummers and a harmonica (answer to this John Dwyer) sows chaos to each of its representations. Their tours are systematically sold out and the slightest new thing from the band on the internet such as a new video or any image from instagram arouses general hysteria. Announced as the closing act of This Is Not A Love Song Festival the members weren’t all there for the following interview but we got the “thinking head” for 15 minutes.

I heard you often go doing impro in Daptone Records’ studios in New York.

We recorded a few times there and I’m In Your Mind Fuzz and Nonagon Infinity were conceived there. It’s an amazing place I’d like to go back more often but as we’re always touring we don’t really have time to stop in New-York. We don’t play a lot there so it limits the possibilities.

But now you have your own studio in Melbourne

Yes but it’s not exclusive. Sometimes it’s hard to plan to record an album ahead not knowing what’s gonna happen in the meantime nor where we will be. The fact to have our own studio allows us not to be dependent from others. It’s rather messy and empty like a box of sardines smelling like sweat but we can do everything there. It’s small but it does the job, it’s cool. Our love home-studio.

You have the reputation to compose and record your songs in one day and one take.

It was like this for “Flying Microtonal Banana” but for this album it was even worse than that giving we recorded 21 songs in 3 days. Most of the songs are actually quite basic whether it’s the lyrics, the composition or the guitar riffs. We’re used to improvise, to focus of specific chords suits and to find variations which are linked and get fucked-up. This is how we compose and record and you can hear it clearly on some of our albums. And yeah generally it works in one take. We’re the dream band of every sound engineer.

Rightly a lot of your songs overlap into one another and are very similar. Where does this whim of making albums of several songs which actually only form one come from?

I’ve always liked recordings and albums which give you the feeling of being deep in a story with a logic continuity rather than an sequence of different songs. To me it seems like the right way of making albums.

By the way, a lot of your fans are talking about “gizzverse” on the internet a term that represents the universe and the links existing between your songs, lyrics, covers, videos… Is it intentional or are your fans the craziest on the planet?

No there are definitely a lot of links which refer to previous albums. The album isn’t released yet (at the moment of the interview) and it’s kinda funny to see all these theories on the web. When the album will be out things are gonna get clearer. I think that in everything that has been thought about Gizzverse (especially on Reddit) there are a lot of ideas we wouldn’t have never thought of. It’s kinda funny seeing this frenzy.

The guy who does the covers of the band is the same one since the beginning.

Yes Jason Galea and he also does the visuals for our gigs. He follows us everywhere when he has the time. He’s like the eighth member of the band. He works next to our recording studio in Melbourne and hears everything we do so he knows exactly what to propose to us to stick to the universes of the albums. He’s super involved in visual creation and there is a great alchemy between visual and sound. By the way on the road between Primavera Nos in Portugal and Nîmes we stopped on hills in Spain to shot a new video not far from the Pyrénées.

I heard you’re pretty interested in working in the cinema too. King Gizzard’s music could make an entire movie in a horrific style like Frankenstein.

I would love to be involved in such a project. If anyone reads these lines and would like to work with me I’m in! I think the band is already in an optic where visual takes a bigger place with our videos ; which is becoming more and more necessary for bands in general.

Your last album “Murder of The Universe” tells a story with a spoken word background. We’re not far from the cinema but in an auditory trip.

It’s true we had already done something similar with our album “Eyes Like The Sky”. This albums is cut in three chapters. The first one The Tale of The Altered Beast explores the themes of temptation and tells the story of a human being who meets a hybrid and mystical creature half-human half-beast. The second one The Lord of Lightning vs. Balrog is focused on a big battle between two entities nicknamed Lord of Lightning and Balrog who represent light’s strength against darkness. The third one Han-Tyumi & The Murder of The Universe deals with a cyborg starting to becoming conscious of its nature and becomes obsessed with throwing-ups and deads. He decides to create a creature named Soy-Protein Munt Machine which only purpose is to vomit. This machine explodes and infinitely expulses throwing-ups which encompass the whole universe and destroy it. Whence the name of the album.

The person who tells the story of the album is an Australian singer signed on your record label Flightless.

Yeah Leah Senior is amazing. We recorded her second album. By listening to it I became obsessed by her voice and we decided she’d be perfect to tell the story of Murder of The Universe. She came in total impro and she killed it.

For most people when we talk about garage and psychedelic rock we usually think about California. But with your band but also The Babe Rainbom, The Murlocs, ORB, POND…. Is Australia the new psych rock nirvana?

From my humble experience, Australia has a long story with rock & roll. But I don’t think things have particularly changed these past years. There always have been brilliants bands. But I think we can still thank Tame Impala for bringing the spotlights on our country recently.

You planned on releasing five album this years. At about half of it you released two. Isn’t your bet a bit bold as you’re always on the road?

We’re gonna try! We have a few ideas we might release but the first one is already happening.

You arrived at quite a heavy moment, hard to surpass in terms of violence. How’s the suite gonna sound?

It’s the angriest album we’ve ever done. For what is about to be released at the end of the year it’s gonna be calmer. The next one will be rather mellow jazz. We worked on it with Alexander Brettin from Mild High Club, a great Los Angeles band. They came to play our Gizzfest in Australia last November. He stayed a few weeks at home and we went to the studio every day. He had dome ideas of pieces and a lot of weed. After many trips back and forth between Melbourne and Los Angeles it was finished. It will be called “Sketches of Brunswick East” It’s a bit of a meeting between our two bands it’s fun. It’s a bit unexpected as a result, it’s a weird experimental jazz, very melodic. It will happen quickly. Jason is already working on the cover.

Don’t you ever stop? Worse than Ty Segall

I think in life you can’t do nothing indefinitely. I have to continually do something because I go crazy otherwise. Uselessness kills.

We could say that with King Gizzard’s music and particularly with Murder of the Universe you are apocalypse soldiers. What do you think?

Some of y’all: