Prince Nifty aka Matt Smith has been making music for 15 years. Interplanetary Machines is his 5th full length, following 2020's We're Not In Kansas Anymore, 2013's Pity Slash Love, 2011's Instant Nifty v ii & i, and 2007's A Sparrow! A Sparrow! Along the way, Smith has been busy as a producer and engineer, co-producing Lido Pimientas Grammy nominated Miss Colombia, Bernice's Puff LP, Isla Craig's The Becoming, and making remixes for Caribou and Sandro Perri among others. He was board president of the Toronto based cooperative record label Blocks Recording Club for several years.
Lyrics for songs in Interplanetary Machines describe a number of dreams which were told to Carl Jung by his patients in the process of psychoanalysis, and later detailed in Jung's pivotal book Flying Saucers: a modern myth of things seen in the skies (1959). Jung considers sightings of UFOs, whether in dreams or in waking life, to be a psychic phenomena, “visionary rumors”, a techno-utopian desire that manifests in visions, and a fantastic projection of salvation and meaning onto the unknown.