Ill Times GUM, Ambrose Kenny-Smith

• 1 Dud 03:48
• 2 Ill Times 03:35
• 3 Minor Setback 03:30
• 4 Fool For You 03:06
• 5 Resilience 03:00
• 6 Powertrippn' 03:10
• 7 Old Transistor Radio 03:10
• 8 Emu Rock 02:26
• 9 Marionette 03:40
• 10 The Gloater 04:22
• Total Runtime 33:47

Info for Ill Times

GUM & Ambrose Kenny-Smith – made of Jay Watson (Gum, Pond, Tame Impala) and Ambrose Kenny-Smith (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Murlocs) – present a special new single/video, “Dud,” from their forthcoming record Ill Times, out July 19th via King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s recently-announced p(doom) records. Loss is a recurring theme across Ill Times, and today’s “Dud,” co-written by Ambrose’s late father, acclaimed musician Broderick Smith, is an ode to the gravitas of losing someone, as well as a thundering celebration of life. Its lyrics were mainly written by Broderick Smith, with Ambrose finishing off a few of the lyrics in the verses and the chorus. His lyrics, especially in context of his father’s passing, are especially poignant: “I had an open heart, I believe I was told to guard it, instead I let it break apart.”

The beautiful, cinematic accompanying video, directed by Matt Wallace and Jack Rule of Recliner Films, sees Ambrose Kenny-Smith riding horseback through bushland in the outskirts of his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. Rule describes the video as landing “somewhere between happy and sad.” He explains, “Sam, an actor and friend of ours played the role perfectly and, when he started to break into dance, he kind of became this emotional extension of Ambrose who could help share the load of the very real emotional heft of this beautiful track.”

Kenny-Smith further explains: “After my Dad passed away in May last year, we never got to properly finish the song together. It only felt right to make the chorus as more of a send off to him. I miss him everyday but I’m so glad I now have this song to remember him by. It helped me process his passing a lot. Dad used to always sign off on his emails and birthday cards with ‘- love Dud x.’”

Watson adds: “This one started as a demo Ambrose sent me, with the songwriting all there. I loved the melody and the classic chord progression, and ran about half of the stems through a tremolo, as well as adding some Vox repeater fuzz tremolo, a classic Spacemen 3 trick. It just sounded like Track 1 to me, I don’t know why.”

Ill Times is easily as much fun as the duo had making it, and that was ridiculous amounts of fun. “What’s so rewarding about making this album with Ambrose – him taking ideas that I’ve loved for so long, and making them exist in real life and sound as good as they did in my head, or even better.”

Jay Watson aka GUM, various instruments
Ambrose Kenny-Smith, vocals, keyboards, harmonica
Additional musicians:
James Richardson, horns (track 4, French Horn, track 10)

Jay Watson, aka GUM
Today, multi-instrumentalist GUM (aka Jay Watson) has released his new album Saturnia, out today everywhere via Spinning Top Records. To celebrate the occasion he also releases the new single “Argentina” featuring the dreamy-pop vocals of the beloved indie artist Hatchie. The music video was directed by Alex Aulson who’d previously collaborated with Watson on the video for the GUM track “Glamorous Damage.”

Remarking on the track, Watson says, “this song isn’t really about Argentina, I just wanna say that I adore Argentina and it’s one of my favorite places to go and play. It’s about letting ego take hold of you and not surrounding yourself with the right people. Features some great vocal parts from Hatchie.”

GUM previously released the singles “Race To The Air” and “Would It Pain You to See?” which received attention from Stereogum, SPIN, Under The Radar, Ghettoblaster Magazine and more and last month dropped the gorgeous “Music Is Bigger Than Hair” which Stereogum said “is a pretty, reverb-drenched ditty that starts off acoustic and grows into something psychedelic, all while drifting along like a river on a hot day.”

GUM will make his way to the United States in October in support of the new album. Stops include NYC, LA, DC, Chicago and more.

Over five albums fronting GUM, not to mention the nine he’s made as co-leader of psych cosmonauts Pond, Watson’s restless imagination has treated us to some of the most sonically diverse explorations of the past decade. On Saturnia, however, these visions have coalesced into the richest, but also the most coherent work of Watson’s career to date.

Coming off the back of 2020’s Out In The World, Watson had a loose idea of where he wanted GUM to travel to next.

Sticks in hand and a rough sonic map in mind, the intervention of the pandemic and the logistics of looking after two small children meant that the songs Watson had started to write were given a previously unprecedented amount of time to percolate in his head and they slowly began to ferment and sprout new tendrils.

“Because of Covid and because I had a new kid, for the first time ever I would write songs and think about them months on end,” he says. “I’d always been a bit of a lazy arranger, but this time I was working on different sections in my head for months.”

With his mind ticking over and creative impulses sparking off new ideas all the time, Watson’s initial blueprint started to look a little different. There were new routes on this map all of a sudden.

“My dream was to make one coherent record that sounded the same all the way through, but it’s just so hard when you like so much different stuff!” he laughs. “I wanted the whole album to sound like Nick Drake at the very beginning, but it just doesn’t work out like that. I’ve got so much equipment and stuff to play with that even if I start with something that sounds like Nick Drake, I’ll start adding things and playing with it and it will take it away into somewhere else immediately.”

The glue that holds Saturnia together, and what anchors it, is that bedrock of real-life playing and organic sounds that Watson was aiming for. But as the record evolved and grew, it proved to be the launchpad for something far wider, adventurous and musically nourishing.

The story of Saturnia is one of Watson starting in one place, finding himself somewhere completely different and in the process finding a new balance. His initial ideas may not have mapped out quite as planned, but frankly, it’s all the better for it.

This album contains no booklet.