With a sound based on emotive melodies and powerful rhythms, Australian artist King George has been described as having a unique mix of light and dark. (Buzz Magazine, MARCH 2009). The man behind the madness George Zois says “It’s taken a while to find the right direction with my sound I always wanted to be able to bring a deep, emotional content to my music, but not lose the rawness.”
From his early days as toddler he has been infatuated by music but although he grew up with music being played around the house he comes from an un-musical family and attended a religious high school that at the time had no interest giving its students a musical output. So what happens when playing music is part of who you are and you’re in an environment that isn’t? George says “I guess you have to break down some walls and make people understand who you are and what makes you happy. Since my early teens I have been writing and playing music and to put it bluntly I fucking love it. For me its very simple, what do we have to leave behind in life? some people have their photo albums, homes, cars, videos etc , all I can leave behind is the songs I have written that capture who I am and what I’m feeling at the time no matter how good or bad the song, it’s there, locked away and captured in time and available for those who are interested.”
The debut album ‘Prisoners Of The Pluto Junction’ was released in February 2010 that took King George from Melbourne to New York City in 2011. George adds, “The album is definitely the direction I wanted to take musically. It is a fair departure from anything I had done before. The themes are provocative, sleazy, immature, serious, heartbreaking and dark. The Pluto Junction for me is like a place of mourning and recovery, a place where I go mentally to pick up the pieces and put myself together again, some people can’t get out of that junction and become their own prisoner. It sounds a bit weird but to be honest its hard to explain and the longer I try to explain the meaning of songs the more I waffle and become boring and like many songwriters and musos we are pretty boring people…we are not here to talk about self indulgent bullshit we are here to rock, and music should be there to be interpreted by the masses or very few in my case!”
With major influences including U2, Bjork, Faith No More, The Killers and even Dusty Springfield there is diversity from where King George draws from. “My favourite albums are U2s Achtung Baby, FNMs The Real Thing, the Killer’s Sams Town, PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City and Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion.”
With the album came a debut film clip for the single Nothing Left and a very wacky video for second single Birthday Girl starring a rooster looking for…well?….no one really knows!. KG explains this came from “the creative mind of my drummer and co producer of the album Michael Makris, who was probably overdosing on protein shakes when he drew up the concept. To be honest I don’t know what it means but its different and fun”
More recently King George played a show in Sydney supporting Jimmy Barnes for the Oz Harvest CEO cook off and played a set in front of 1000 homeless people that where being fed by the countries top corporate CEOs. King George adds “for me it was special, considering their situation, these people were having such a great time and I sometimes wonder how are they going and if any of them have managed to move forward in life over the last few monthsI stop and think about this once in while more importantly I hope the CEOs do as well.”
The trip to US in 2011 has had a major impact on the King with George doing plenty of writing in New York and penning ‘Why Am I Here?’ released around Christmas 2012 and the new single ‘Hover’ released in March 2013.
2013 saw the launch of videos for the singles ‘Hover’ (that won the best thematic award at the Australian Independent Music Video Awards 2013) and ‘Heroes’ (Lyric Video).
King George played 3 rocking shows in Toronto for Indie Week 2013 and was a tour that inspired the writing of new material. With the first half of 2014 in the studio recording a new album King George released a second lyric video for the sleazy tune ‘Firestone’ (by UK director Jonathan Oslar) and released the single and video for ‘Broken Hearted Whispers’ (by Australian director Dillon Pearce) which was nominated for the Hollywood Music in Media Award and Australian Independent Music Video Awards in 2014.
The new album ‘Love Songs and Medications’ was released in October 2014 and is the follow up album to 2010’s ‘Prisoners of the Pluto Junction’ and features songs with sounds and melodies that cover themes such as love, heartbreak, ambition, temptation and regret.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
http://www.kinggeorge.com.au/
http://www.facebook.com/kinggeorgemusic13
http://twitter.com/kinggeorgemusic
http://kinggeorge13.bandcamp.com/album/love-songs-medications
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kinggeorge
http://www.youtube.com/kinggeorgeband
