At first, they didn’t really take themselves seriously. Hence the name, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard; a bit ridiculous and hard to remember. But judging by the long list of journalists present on the day of the Paris International Festival of Psychedelic Music at La Machine du Moulin Rouge despite the scorching heat to interview Stu Mackenzie, a young Australian and above all singer-guitarist of the band, it seems the joke has become serious business.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is a truly creative band and have produced a series of great albums in just four years, their latest concept album (Quarters!) being no exception. If Mackenzie acts like a man in a hurry when it comes to adding new entries to his discography, he knows how to be composed and affable when he’s bombarded with questions.

Let’s begin by talking about Quarters!. How did you come up with the idea for this album?
We’d just finished I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. They’re a little connected. We recorded them in the same studio, Daptone in New York, with the same gear, everything was fairly similar. But I wanted them to be different; they’re opposites in a way.

I'm In Your Mind Fuzz was a difficult record to make, we spent a lot of time on it and I wanted it to be different for Quarters!, maybe that's my lazy side, I wanted it to be simpler. So there's a lot of improvisations, jams…

I wrote the four tracks with lots of looper pedals. It’s just simple, repetitive chord progressions. The songs are long but basic. So I wrote them before showing them to the other band members. We spent three days rehearsing, I showed them the songs and told them, “Here are the riffs, I want you to do whatever feels right”. I’m In Your Mind Fuzz is very constructed, very thought out, we rehearsed lots, but this one is very improvisational. But that was the starting point, then three days of rehearsing and one day of recording. We did a lot of takes one after the other. Everything was recorded on cassette, no computers or anything like that, lots of takes on cassette, lots of cuts, collages…

I’m In Your Mind Fuzz is very heavy, for us it’s darker than most of what we’d done before and maybe more serious too. I wanted Quarters! to be pretty in a way, and to try to make the songs last 10 minutes and see how we can make them interesting enough yet still fairly simple, that was the challenge.

In a way, it’s a logical successor to I’m In Your Mind Fuzz because you tried long jams on that disc and in the end the first 4 tracks were like a 12 minute long track…
Yeah I wanted it to feel like a continuation from when you get to the end of I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. Because that starts heavy and gets more and more tranquil as the record goes on. I wanted us to have this type of voyage, and when we listen to Quarters! just after IIYMF we get the feeling that the journey is ending, like a 2nd part in fact.

Ok. But didn’t this concept that you imposed on Quarters! (4 tracks of 10:10) become a constraint at some point?
Yes, but I like constraints. I need to have constraints to be creative, otherwise I wouldn’t know which direction to take. I need to know where I’m going before I start working. I’m not going to walk toward the Eiffel Tower if I don't know which direction to go. It’s the same basic thing. So yes for Quarters! we knew vaguely where we were going, and we needed to put the right parts together to get there.

Wasn’t it complicated for you, who are used to making rather garage fuzzy tracks, to launch into long psychedelic ones? Did it come naturally?
We made psych tracks in the past, not as long, but there was thus a degree of continuity. But yes, it was a challenge.

Yes, that was my impression. Because you’re very creative, you don’t have any difficulty writing albums, you’ve done 6 in 4 years… I thus thought you were looking to impose a challenge, something new for you but you’re telling me in the end it was easier?!
Yes. Quarters! was a lot easier to make than IIYMF, for sure. Mostly because there was a lot of improvisation. IIYMF is very structured, we knew everything we had to include at each moment before recording but on the day we recorded Quarters!, they didn’t even know the songs, so we didn’t have to think, “Oh shit, what’s the 12th measure again…” This one was more simple because we spent less time and thought on it because I wanted it to seem “jammy”, improvised, like it was captured in the moment. Live.

So it was a very different writing process.
Yes, like I said, I really wanted it to be the opposite of IIYMF, like polar opposites and that made things a lot simpler. We probably spent more time on the mix because there was a lot of tape manipulation, we tried something a little crazy like recording the album on VHS cassettes. Does that make sense in French?

Yes we understand!
Sorry, it’s because I said that in an interview in Denmark and they didn’t understand what I was talking about.

We know, before DVDs!
Yeah, yeah, exactly! I wasn’t sure, maybe they have different initials [here].

Anyway it has a really unique sound, recording on cassettes, extracting the sound, reworking it, stretching it, re-recording over it, glueing parts over others, getting these weird glitchy sounds. It’s an idea I had afterwards actually, but it’s part of the concept. I thought some of the tracks were boring, it was maybe too harsh a judgement, but I said to myself, “How can we move things forwards, make them more interesting? Let’s take these simple things and reinsert something a little unexpected to it all.” For me, this whole way of working with cassettes adds energy and gives the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen, adding an element of surprise.

And you also used a lot of different samples, especially on “The Infinite Rise” (a horse, a cat, a crying baby…). Do you like to pick sounds like that, that can inspire you, to build your tracks around or are they just little tweaks that complete them?
We’ve only done that once or twice. It’s something to do with lyrics, like the game “wordplay games”. I don't know if there's a French equivalent, it's an English game where you say a word, then someone else says another word that pops into their head. I say cat, you say dog... It's almost without thinking, you switch off your brain, you say what comes into your head. And all the lyrics in this song work that way, so…

They're illustrations of your words.
Yeah. The lyrics are rhyming couplets, 2 or 3 syllables and a rhythm related to the previous one. There’s no real meaning, it’s just a game of “wordplay”. And the sound effects were added in the same way to work with the words. The sound isn’t always perfectly linked to the lyrics, but it has something to do with them. It’s the same principle, as if you listen to the words and play the sound effect that comes to mind in that moment. And once you’ve found it, you integrate it into the song. That was the idea.

And as a group of seven members, is it not complicated to make decisions together about your songs?
My role is to be something of a boss. I’m maybe a bit authoritative, I don’t know, you’d have to ask the others but everyone has ideas, everyone is very creative within the group. 5 out of 7 of us are composers, we’ve written songs for other groups and sometimes for King Gizzard. But in the end it’s as if we’ve put in place a sort of filter for what does and doesn’t work. Every album is a bit of a reflection of everyone’s state of mind, a collection of lots of ideas. We try to establish what kind of ideas will work before we embark on the album.

Ok. I’ll change the subject a little. Recreational marijuana has just been legalised in Oregon. Your album must be selling like hotcakes in that state?
(Laughs) That’s funny! I have no idea. (Laughs)

Don’t you think your music is particularly appreciated by drug users?
I suppose so. It’s funny, really… because it wasn’t really an intentional thing to begin with.

“I’m In Your Mind”!
Yeah (laughs). (He reflects) I’m trying to think and understand why people who use drugs or smoke weed are so interested in psychedelic music. I imagine it’s a way of exploring your subconscious, digging into what your mind can create. That has to be the link. I don’t know, it's interesting…

Dig in! Last week you played three concerts in one day?! I read it on your Facebook, when you were at Glastonbury…
Yes! It was a long day! We took off from New York where we’d played two concerts, the second was at 1:30 am and we finished around 2:30 am or so, by the time we’d loaded out it was 3 or 4 am and our flight was at 7 am to London. So we left straight after the concert, we’d already had a hectic day, and we’d just come from another city… So we were already very tired when we boarded the plane. We landed in London around 10 or 11 am and it was like getting out of bed, because we slept for 5 hours on the plane. We were completely jet-lagged. So we woke up, we went straight to Glastonbury, we were in a weird state, a zombie mode, super tired but also completely lost as to the time. And I hadn’t realised how long days are in summer in this part of the [northern hemisphere].

Yeah, they are longer.
They’re so long! We’re from the south of Australia, the days are long but not like this. We were thinking, “what the hell is this, it’s 11 pm and the sun's still out, what’s going on? It’s so weird!”. And we had to leave just after Glastonbury, our hotels were a few hours away. I don’t know when the sun came up, it felt like I’d been awake for 8 days! But it was great, Glastonbury was so cool!

Have you ever played in front of so many people before?
Not often. It’s true that I was very surprised to play in front of so many people, the main stage is very big, the other stages are smaller but in front of this one there were really a lot of people. Yeah it was cool! It’s really a very cool festival, I wasn’t sure it would still have such a cool atmosphere, because it’s been around for a long time and it’s famous, but it’s still cool. There’s always a great atmosphere, it’s special.

So you’ll return to Europe?
Yes of course! This is the second time we’ve come to Europe, but we didn’t play in France the last time.

To get back to your studio albums and your inspirations, you’ve already touched on many genres, what might be your next step?
We’ve just finished the album in fact, it’s something rather folk, I want to get away from weird songs. Before doing Quarters! I wanted to get away from that, I felt a certain pressure since I did those epic songs, a really heavy pressure, I wanted to put that aside and make an album of normal songs…

Folk songs, acoustic?
Yes, no electric instruments, no electric guitar, no keyboards, no electric bass.

You must have fired a lot of band members!
(Laughs) Yeah! In fact we didn’t record it together, it was recorded at home. There’s also clarinet, flute, violin, cello. We just did what we could ourselves, and they’re kind of “song songs”. I don’t know how else to describe them. It’s the next album, I don’t know if we’ll play it live, maybe we will, but it was a challenge to make this album too.

When will it be out? Three months?
I hope by the end of the year, there’s not really a date. By the end of the year.

So you’re keeping the rhythm of two albums a year!
Not necessarily, but that’s what we’ve been able to do. We do what we can. Some groups like to do an album, then do a load of press and spend a lot of time before moving onto the next one, work 18 months, do other stuff on the side. I don’t want to do that. Because if you spend too much time on it you hate all your songs and you lose interest in them and want to do something else. I want to avoid that. To renew, to bring freshness…

Last year you made the band’s whole discography available for free download on the Internet and you said it was because “we’re in the future” (laughs). Is that how the future should be, free music?
Not necessarily. I don’t want to get into a big debate about the value of music, piracy… But personally, I’m not speaking for other bands, I’m happy for as many people as possible to have our music. If they want to buy it, listen with a friend, burn a CD or download it I don’t give a fuck, I’m simply happy that people are listening to our music. Because that will mean more people coming to our concerts, and in the end that’s positive for me. We don’t make any money from digital sales anyway so I’m happy to give them away.

And maybe then they’ll buy physical versions, especially since you have such beautiful covers…
I wouldn’t like people coming into my house and stealing my records from under my bed. But it’s not the same as downloading digital music. That’s my feeling and I’d probably do it again.

I’ve read that your father used to sing you Neil Young songs to get you to sleep.
Yes, that’s true.

Do you have an opinion about his latest album against Monsanto? Not necessarily just the music, but the concept too.
I haven’t heard it yet. I’ll get to it, I'm always the slowest to listen to new releases.

But what do you think of the concept of the album? He’s 70, he’s still battling big businesses…
I love Neil Young! He’s great, he’s the best! When my dad would sing Neil Young to me, I was about 5, I didn’t know anything about him obviously, and then when I was a teenager I thought he was really lame because my dad loved him...

And even later I realised he’s one of the most incredible musicians of all time. He’s obviously one of my heroes. I don’t know, I can’t really talk about his last album because I don’t have it. I loved Psychedelic Pills[sic], his previous album, it was really an incredible album.

Yes, one of the best! It's crazy!
It's so cool, when the album came out I thought “I want to be like you Neil, but I'm old!” (laughs)

So you'll be singing Neil Young to your son too?
Yes! I'll do that. When I have a son, I'll do that.

Cool! Are you close to other Australian psychedelic bands like Pond or Tame Impala? Do you know each other well?
I know Pond very well, Jay [Watson, multi-instrumentalist – ed.] who also plays in Tame Impala, and Joe [Ryan, idem – ed.] is a very good friend of ours. And we know Nick [Albrook, idem – ed.] well, but that’s all because they’re the opposite of us in Australia.

Yes of course, Australia is big!
Yes, it’s very big! They’re from Perth, but most of Pond live in Melbourne now, where we’re also from. They’re all lovely; incredible groups and very cool people. I have nothing but positive things to say about them.

And there’s also this girl who comes from Melbourne and has been getting a lot of good hype lately, Courtney Barnett. I’ve seen that she’s played on stage with you before.
Yes, she’s our mate. We’ve known Courtney for a long time. She’s great and very talented. I can’t say enough nice things about her, she’s great!

Would you collaborate with her one day?
I’d love to! She’s really a great person, she’s incredible. If ever you read this Courtney, I love you!

Interview by JL Thanks to Yann Roskell (PIAS) for organising this interview.