Yet another supergroup has spawned from the King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard limbs with Ambrose Kenny-Smith teaming up with Jay Waton of Gum, Pond and Tame Impala for a new album.
Pulling their projects together as GUM / Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Jay Watson and, the aforementioned, Ambrose Kenny-Smith have announced a new record Ill Times ready to drop 19 July.
Keeping in the King Gizzard family, the debut album is the first release for the supergroup’s newly announced p(doom) records, a label that enables King Gizz “to put out our own records and our friends’ too. If you all keep listening to ’em, we’ll keep making ’em”. It’s only fitting then that Kenny-Smith is the first pull on the label having played with the band since inception in the old Nash band room in Geelong.
Ill Times Tracklist
- Dud
- Ill Times
- Minor Setback
- Fool For You
- Resilience
- Powertrippn’
- Old Transistor Radio
- Emu Rock
- Marionette
- The Gloater
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The meeting of Watson and Kenny-Smith first took place at the bar in the hazy hours after Tame Impala played the legendary Eureka Hotel in Geelong, Victoria 2009, before The Murlocs and King Gizz had grown wings. It wasn’t until the bands shot to fame that the bond between these two groups was forged.
The roots of Ill Times lay in an instrumental Watson had recorded that he loved but couldn’t find a home in Pond or Gum by itself. Kenny-Smith has entered the chat; Watson DM’d the demos to Kenny-Smith along with a link to ‘Magic Mountain’. Kenny-Smith was keen but the idea remained non-corporeal for more than a year whilst both musicians toured to world with their respective acts. It was at Christmas that the bells started to ring for the duo.
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A cross-continent transactional approach to songwriting started, with an instrumental sent to Kenny-Smith for lyric additions and sent back to Watson for approval. Ill Times takes both songwriters strong points – the colossal grooves of Watsons sound and the melodic mastery of Kenny-Smith with the albums lyrical content taking a swing at losers with god complexes.
For six albums now you have heard Jay Watson’s unfiltered brain as Gum, but now you can hear what it sounds like through the bluesy soulful lens of Ambrose Kenny-Smith.
Ill Times is available for pre-order digitally today and physical pre-orders are live on 10 May at 10am AEST via pdoomrecords.com
