The first traces of “The Dripping Tap” showed up in the 2018 sessions for Fishing For Fishies. The band had traveled to the rural Victorian home studio owned by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin of the Australian Art Punk/Noise Rock band Tropical Fuck Storm, where several days of recording and jamming were hosted. Originally, the song had simply been a jam affectionately referred to as the “Hat Jam” (sometimes stylized as “Hatjam”), as the band were wearing a variety of hats while playing. The session was loud, energetic and formless — lasting over twenty minutes and containing vital riffs that would come back around. The wild pull offs from Joey and Stu, as well as the “left the tap on” motifs can be heard on the released tapes found on Demos Vol. 3, Vol. 4 and Vol. 5. According to a press release featuring Fiona, the jam was a spur of the moment thing after a few too many drinks, but one that would prove to be fruitful. “Hat Jam” would be filmed, cut down, and added to the end of their short documentary How to gut a Fishie by Jason Galea. Upon the release of the video, fans were already calling for the jam to be released in some form. This is evident by comments at the time, and the fact that the most viewed part of the video is around the 11:43 mark, right when the jam begins. Even in its unfinished, unmixed and highly distorted form, the song had captured an audience. Both bands involved also seemed to love the piece and would continue to workshop what they had.
In a bonus feature for the concert film Chunky Shrapnel titled “Amby,” another seed is planted. Filmed during the band’s 2019 European tour, the video shows Ambrose and Stu messing around with a keyboard. When later asked about this video in a Reddit AMA on May 11th, 2022, Ambrose would state that this was the intro of “The Dripping Tap'' and that it had gone through a few iterations before settling on what was put to record. A short demo for the section (released on Demos Vol. 6) features a lo-fi electronic kit, a bouncy bassline and a nice keyboard part. The only thing missing here from a compositional viewpoint is the final note of the phrase. While the jam was shrouded in mystery, Stu said that it would “kinda” be released in the future during a 2020 Reddit AMA.
Later down the line in August of 2021, Gareth Liddiard of Tropical Fuck Storm stated that a collaboration between TFS and King Gizzard was underway and that it “got put on the backburn [sic] for a while.” Outside of this statement little was said about the collaboration. Lucas has said that after the Melbourne pandemic lockdowns ended and the band were able to rehearse and record in the same room together again, the first thing they did was revisit this song. “We were just recording as much as we could — Melbourne’s lockdown was long, brutal and strict so we didn’t get together a lot for a very long time,” he said. “‘The Dripping Tap’ was the first thing that we did when we got together, and it made sense to us because it was this jam that we had floating around that we had never finished. It felt like something that we didn’t need to conceptualize. We didn’t need to plan and rehearse; we could just pick up our instruments, hit record and go. We recorded for hours, capturing everything and keeping the best bits. That was what felt right at the time after being not social, not together and not interacting.” Stu would say in a SPIN article “It was like, shit. This song’s sweet and we need to finish it. That one was like that, but it was a newly recorded thing. It had a vibe. We didn’t know it was going to be that long.”