Watson and Kenny-Smith first met at the bar in the hazy hours after Tame Impala played the legendary Eureka Hotel in Kenny-Smith’s hometown of Geelong, Victoria in 2009.
GUM / Ambrose Kenny-Smith – made of Jay Watson (Gum, Pond, Tame Impala) and Ambrose Kenny-Smith (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Murlocs) – announce a new collaborative album, Ill Times, out July 19th. This is the debut release on King Gizzard’s newly-announced p(doom) records.
p(doom) records
As described by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, p(doom) records is a label “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 the first addition to the catalog is Ill Times, an album born out of the friendship between Watson and Kenny-Smith that began over a decade ago.
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It wasn’t until Kenny-Smith’s bands came to prominence a couple of years later, after that fateful meeting at the Eureka Hotel, that the bond between these groups was formed. The roots of Ill Times lay in an instrumental Watson had recorded that he loved but couldn’t find a home for in Pond or GUM by itself. The track haunted him, enough that he ended up discussing it at some festival Pond and King Gizz were both playing somewhere on the planet one summer. Watson DM’d Kenny-Smith the track, along with a link to ‘Magic Mountain’. “Jay said that was the vibe he wanted,” Kenny-Smith continues, “and I’m a big Eric Burdon try-hard, so I was into it.”
Ill Times is available to pre-order digitally today and physical pre-orders are live on May 10th at 10PM AEST here.
