After following up their proper U.S. debut at New York City’s CMJ music marathon in 2014 with a two-album effort the following year, Australian psych rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard returned last month with Nonagon Infinity, a fuzzed-out explosion that serves as almost the exact opposite of last year’s all-acoustic Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. Frontman Stu Mackenzie recently talked with us about the extra-long process of bringing Nonagon Infinity to life, their introduction to the music scene in the U.S. and their budding relationship with Brooklyn’s Daptone Records, where they recorded the new album.
Your new album, Nonagon Infinity was in the works even before Paper Mâché came out, right?
It was kind of in the works before (2015’s) Quarters came out too, which was the one before that. I mean, this one took a bit longer to piece together. The record before that, (2014’s) I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, is probably the most similar record we made, and I guess this one we started conceptualizing straight off of that one. I suppose it flows on from that one a little bit. It was supposed to be the next record after that, but it just didn’t really feel like it was ready, and we wanted to explore some other ideas along the way and let this one brew.
These were songs we’ve been playing live for a long time now. They felt like they were songs that needed to be played, to be worked out. Whereas with Quarters and Paper Mâché, that was sort of the opposite—they felt like songs that needed to be rehearsed in a bedroom as opposed to on a stage.
These songs definitely seem a lot heavier than the stuff on Paper Mâché. Do you think they’ve changed in that timespan with you guys playing them live?
Definitely. We did some recordings for quite a few of the songs—it must have been eight months ago now—that were very different to how they ended out. I think that was part of the reason why we kept pushing it back. We’re listening back to these recordings we’ve done of these tunes and thinking: These aren’t quite there yet; they need some more thought.
How do you think that elongated process changed the way you thought about the songs?
With this record, I wanted [the songs] to be the seven of us playing together as a band. I know that sounds normal and obvious, but that’s not really how we’ve recorded very much in the past. It’s usually one or two of us who do everything and experiment in the studio with different stuff or at a home studio. Part of the concept, at least for us, was to work out tracks which felt good with everyone playing and everyone figuring out their parts on the fly. I suppose that’s kind of normal for most groups but it wasn’t for us. We wanted to let the songs evolve and take their own shape. Also, with this record, with parts of the songs—little motifs and stuff—coming in and out of different tracks and sampling each other, that all slowly evolved in a live sense, too—just improvising on one track and all of a sudden it’s turning into a different track. It was by far the slowest evolution of a record we’ve ever made.
I was going to ask, have you ever taken this long for one single album?
No, not this long. We took longer with I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, too, and we made Oddments, the record before that, while we were making that one, in a similar way. With this one we made two records in between. This one is the longest in the making for sure.
With everyone putting in their ideas in the development of the songs, do you think this is more of a collaborative band effort then you’ve had before?
In some senses, yes, for sure. In the sense that, with this record, there wasn’t anyone saying, “Don’t play that, play this” or “I’ve written the drum part and I’ve written the bass part; here it is.” It’s more like, “Here’s the rough idea, here’s the vibe. It’s in this key and it’s got these notes, here are some of the words—everyone go nuts.”
What is the usual writing process for you guys—one person bringing in a song and everyone adding in to that general idea?
It’s been different for different records. With Nonagon, all the initial ideas were mine, but they completely ended up so different from how I originally envisioned them. With a record like Paper Mâché, Joe [Walker] wrote two tracks, Cook [Craig] wrote one track, Ambrose [Kenny Smith] and I wrote a track together and the rest were my songs. There were collaborations on all the songs, really. With that record, for quite a few of the songs, there’s only one or two people on it playing everything. Whereas this one, they were my initial ideas, but I deliberately kept it pretty vague and very, very open.
You definitely a lot these days about one guy being in a band and playing the entire album himself and then figuring out how to do that on the road with other people.
There always has been that element to our band. There’s been a lot of tracks over the years that I’ve just played everything on, or maybe Cav [Michael Cavanagh] has played the drums and I’ve sort of played everything else. It’s so awesome to have five of the people in the band being pretty amazing songwriters. There’s a lot of heads to bounce off. You can throw ideas lots of different ways, and they’ll catch it and take it into different directions. The collaboration process is the best—it’s what makes music have the magical communication that you can’t achieve regularly.
In an earlier interview with us, you referred to Paper Mâché as an anti-concept album. Do you think Nonagon Infinity is more of a concept album? Do you think these songs flow together and have general themes?
To me, definitely. I probably said that while we were working on Nonagon Infinity and having my mind being melted by trying to do this record. Paper Mâché was, by contrast, enjoyable and pain-free to make. With Paper Mâché, there still were overall themes, but we wanted to be acoustic and experiment with different instruments. We deliberately didn’t want to have long, proggy songs. We didn’t want the songs to have connecting themes, for this song to be about this other song. That’s because we were working on Nonagon Infinity, which had all of these ideas tapped into it. We wanted to keep brewing, but we wanted to make a record which didn’t interfere with it. I think [with] the concept for Paper Mâché, we came up with too much, so we said, “What’s the most opposite thing we can do to Nonagon Infinity so there’s no cross pollination of ideas?” It’s separate—that’s where it came from.
You say Paper Mâché was a painless process—do you think this one was a bit more painful? Maybe painful’s not the best word…
I would say painful. I would say moments of pain, definitely. It was just a difficult record to put together. We’re not trained musicians or anything. This was musically challenging to make, especially for the drummers—lots of different time signatures and rhythms and changes. [Also] thinking conceptually about how these songs are going to mash together and trying to visualize how it would all come together, trying to have everything planned before you go and record it. It was just difficult. The editing process was difficult, too. Many times I had started to think we had bitten off more than we could chew and I think that’s why it took so long to make. We wanted to keep persisting with it, and it eventually came together.
So are you guys are happy with it, in the end?
I don’t think we would put a record out if we [weren’t]. That’s why we made two records while we were working on it—we weren’t happy with it yet.
You’ve mentioned before that you guys were trying to put out two records per year. After this process, is that still your idea?
I think this record will be our only record this year. We need a bit of a chill-out break for a second. We’ve been touring flat-out, and it’s hard to make records while touring. We’ve got some other ideas in the pipeline, but it’s early stages at this time.
You guys came on the radar, at least for people in the U.S., when you were playing CMJ in New York in Fall of 2014. How much time had you spent in the country before that?
Not so much—maybe it was our second trip.
I was wondering if that was your first experience with playing multiple shows in the U.S.
It definitely was. CMJ was two or three shows a day. We’ve done that sort of thing a few times after that. At the time, it was crazy. In Australia, you can’t do that; there’s not enough people to play to.
What’s it like going from playing for people in Australia to playing for people in New York City who have maybe never heard of you?
It’s cool. I don’t think we really knew what we were in for. You can kind of analyze the crowds or whatever, but at the end of the day, most of the time, people are people. Most venues across the world are more or less the same. There are definitely differences, but it’s comforting in a way how similar everything can be once you’ve stepped into a band room or go to a bar or a club or a pub or something. It’s all the same.
Do you think there’s any more pressure playing in another country where people may not know you as opposed to playing around where you grew up?
I get way more nervous to play when I know there’s people that I know in the crowd, definitely, especially if my parents are there. I don’t know—that’s only pressure that you put on yourself. It’s a tough one, I think it’s probably easier playing overseas, especially places you haven’t been before. There’s not really any expectations. The more you play, the more people have expectations, the more people have seen you before and places you’ve been before, that sort of thing.
You have a relationship with Daptone Records in Brooklyn. How did that come about, and how has that relationship developed?
I guess it was pretty serendipitous. It was on the very first trip [to the U.S.], and we had some time and songs we wanted to record. We were Googling some studios in New York and just trying to find somewhere. We had a small home-setup rig because we were traveling. I don’t think we had a proper setup to do the whole band. We were looking around, and we kind of knew about Daptone—they made some phenomenal records that we’re fans of. We put the feelers out there and ended up figuring out we had a friend of a friend who actually works there. It was a real coincidence. We got put in touch and that was it. We did one day there that time—that was kind of finishing off I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. We recorded Quarters there and we recorded Nonagon Infinity there, too.
What was it like recording in the House of Soul? I’ve heard several artists talk about how much of a family it is with the people and the label over there.
It’s amazing. Initially, I was definitely pretty intimidated. They’re sort of total vintage nuts. I guess I just didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if they would think that we’re a stupid rock band or something or we didn’t have cool enough gear, but there was none of that at all. They just love music, and we ended up establishing an awesome family relationship with them. We have a few buddies there now that we always catch up with when we’re back in New York. It’s such a cool studio. It’s fully analog—there are no computers in the whole place, only tape. There’s not even a computer or a screen there, which is so nice to hear the music as opposed to always staring at waveforms, always staring at volume meters. You can [record] everything to an eight track. To me, it was kind of a challenge with a seven-piece, but it’s no problem to them. You get a different sound, you play with a different energy when you’re rolling onto the tape. It’s a cool place. I want to record there every time we go to New York and have more than a few hours to spare.
That vintage sound you’re talking about, I think that fits really well with you guys.
I think we’ve always had a similar aesthetic. We’ve always used tape and have always experimented with lots of old gear, but not in a purist way. I don’t have a problem recording fully to the computer if it sounds good. I’m definitely not a purist, but I think there is a lot of merit in exploring everything. And it just sounds cool. There are things you can do with tape that you really can’t pull off with a computer. I think we definitely drew a lot of inspiration from those recording sessions.
