GUM & Ambrose Kenny-Smith release collaborative single ‘Minor Setback’

GUM and Ambrose Kenny-Smith have released a collaborative single, ‘Minor Setback’, backed with another new track ‘Old Transistor Radio’. GUM - aka Jay Watson - is a member of the band Pond and continues to be a touring member of Tame Impala, and has released five studio albums under this moniker. Kenny-Smith is a member of the bands King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard and The Murlocs. The songs were originally released as an exclusive for Record Store Day Australia on white 7” vinyl, and they are now available digitally. Speaking about the collaboration itself, Watson has said, “I make a lot of music, but often don’t have the voice or the steez to put a vocal on certain pieces of music. I’ve known Ambrose for 10 years or so now and I’ve always loved his voice, a mix of garage rock and soulfulness. We’ve talked about putting something out together for a long time. I reached out to him and the songs were done in less than a week. Might have to make a whole record!” Ambrose Kenny-Smith added: “When GUM hit me up to sing on a few tracks of his I was super excited! These songs are way funkier than anything I’ve ever worked on before. After he sent me ‘Magic Mountain’ by Eric Burdon and War as a reference for the vocals he was wanting from me I was instantly 110% in. “You sent me the track for ‘Minor Setback’ right before my friend passed away,” Ambrose continues, nodding to Watson. “That afternoon I had a bunch of stuff on in Melbourne and I couldn’t make it to the funeral down the coast. So I streamed the funeral and then I wrote the lyrics to the song and it’s somewhat connected to that relationship in a way. Like not letting things bring you down and to just keep on truckin’, I guess. I love it when you get a burst of inspiration and can smash something out really quickly. Then that one came together really quickly and we decided to do the 7” single after that.” “From when we started doing the first song properly, it was a week until it was mastered,” Watson explain. “Which is really fun for me, because I’ve always recorded quickly, but I always spend about a year just dicking around mixing things. And it doesn’t necessarily make the mixes any better. So I got really excited by mixing it really quickly. Almost as if it wasn’t even my song, like you’d sent me a Murlocs song or something. That’s what I found really fun about the whole collab.” Listen to ‘Minor Setback’ below. The pair have also shared a second track ‘Old Transistor Radio’, which, as Watson explains below, has been in the works for a long time. “I’ve tried to get ‘Old Transistor Radio’ going for so long,” he says. “I sent it to The Avalanches years ago when they were working on that second album for 20 years and I didn’t know what sort of music it was. My friend just told me to send it. I thought they were still sampling stuff and it turns out they were almost finished it. They said something really nice back to me but didn’t use it. We’d tried to use ‘Minor Setback’ for a POND record, but it just didn’t work. I also had someone else sing on it. But I think that’s important, it’s not the shit that was sitting at the bottom of Dropbox.”