“We were in New York a couple of years ago and had some songs and time,” said Stu. It’s famously hard to get into the Daptone studios, either you’re on head engineer Gabriel Roth’s radar, or a friend of a friend. Even across the ocean, the band has a relationship with tape op and engineer Wayne Gordon at the home of Daptone in Brooklyn, New York, where the band recorded most of Nonagon Infinity. Likewise, Jason Galea, who dreams up all the artwork for the band has a space at Flightless HQ. For instance, producer/engineer Paul Maybury has been a constant collaborator, and Secret Location is like a second home to the Gizz.
Still, despite Gizz’s army of creative go-getters and a habitable recording space, the band has always displayed a healthy habit of bringing in outside contributors. Drummer Joe Walker has been recording Leah Senior at Gizz HQ, Ambrose Kenny-Smith and Cook Craig are in another Flightless band The Murlocs, second drummer Moore runs Flightless, and Stu works full-time on Gizz, producing and recording their music via any medium, including reel-to-reel analogue tape, direct to digital, even VHS. That’s always been the broader legend surrounding Gizzard that they’re a psych-rock collective with such a fervour for DIY you’ll just as easily find them with a Stanley knife gritted between their teeth as a guitar in their hands. There’s not much too it, a handful of stud walls covered in carpet tiles, rugs on the ground and a makeshift wall of office dividers that distinguishes the control room from the live room. When he arrived back home in Brunswick East, he invited me into drummer Eric Moore’s Flightless Records’ headquarters, where King Gizzard have fashioned a studio out of the remainder of the first floor tenancy. I finally tracked down lead singer and head Gizzard, Stu Mackenzie, for a chat while he was hiking the mountains of Utah as a bit of R ’n’ R before a non-stop 30-day tour of the US. Prince was prolific these guys are dropping more tasty treats than Hansel and Gretel. Rumour has it, there might be four Gizzard albums released in 2017. In the four years since my almost encounter, the band has released a whopping eight albums! The latest is Nonagon Infinity, which may or may not be their latest release by the time this goes to print. I mustn’t be a very good tracker, because King Gizzard’s breadcrumb trail is a non-stop buffet. It’s the perfect Gizzard nest, with enough room to sprawl out across the defunct textile factory floor. The closest I’ve come to cornering the seven-headed beast was a routine studio tour of Paul Maybury’s Secret Location Sound Recorders, where the Gizz had been holed up the week before. I’ve been tracking King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard since early 2012.
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