Tame Impala
Since the release of their self-titled EP in 2008, Tame Impala have covered some serious ground, selling more than 20 000 copies of that release in Australia and touring relentlessly, both nationally and in the UK, including spots at Falls and the Big Day Out. Their debut album, 'InnerSpeaker' is due for release later this month, the long-player a chance for the band to take their time and broaden out their sound. Guitarist Kevin Parker is once again in the role of producer, relishing the chance to expand his knowledge on that side of the mixing desk. "Tim Holmes, the engineer, he plays in a band called Death In Vegas" begins Parker, "I told him before we started I was quite fixed in my ways of being unprofessional in recording" he says, laughing. "He was totally cool with it, and so it was usually me doing a lot of it and he would help out with microphones and general mechanics. But the main learning experience for me was when we mixed it, I went to America and mixed with Dave Fridmann, he's this guy that's produced and recorded the Flaming Lips and MGMT and stuff like that, so he's a complete sound looney." The resulting album finds the band shedding much of the raw, garage edge that featured on the EP in favour of a more shimmering, clean traditional psych sound. "Well, I mean a lot of that's to do with the recording process," Parker reasons, "on the EP it wasn't so much that it was intended to sound garagey, it's just that I wasn't very good at recording music," he states with a wry laugh. "On the album it was meant to sound a lot more dreamy and almost electronic. I wanted the drums to sound like something that would potentially be a sample a DJ would use or something like that, I wanted to approach the songs in a way that a mash up artist might do, sampling something from the 70's, 60's, whatever." The blissed out sound is somewhat unexpected, given that most psych or prog bands these days tend to have heavy dystopic elements to them. "Yeah, I mean we used to be a little bit more like that, we had a lot more riffs, a lot more overdrive" Parker considers. "My interest in heavy guitars has waned, definitely. I just find that really powerful songs, powerful sounds at least, come from things that aren't trying to be the heaviest thing ever. I find it to be more of an accomplishment to be able to fuck with someone's head than blow them away. I just like that kind of craft- the best thing is to make people feel like they're stoned when they're not. A big thing for me was seeing the Flaming Lips, they actually, like completely destroyed my brain... I was tripping a little bit when I saw them, but even so..." he concedes with a chuckle. "I think our live show is going to hopefully delve into that a lot more." Rather fittingly for a guy who has just recorded an album that will appeal to space-cadets, Parker was once an astronomy student, a gig which proved influential on the band in the form of their EP cover and also in a more philosophical way. "I studied astronomy for a while but had to ditch it because I got this record deal, but I saw this one slide once that truly changed my whole perspective on, kind of, the relative size of things and just seeing," Parker recalls. "It had a diagram of our sun and then another star bigger than the sun, and then another star that was many, many, many millions of times bigger than our sun, and then knowing there are stars many millions of times bigger than that... I love that kind of thought where you think that something almighty to you, like the sun, it's like 'the sun', " he exclaims in mock reverence. "And yet, it's just this miniscule thing in the grand scheme of things, it resonates well with me. I think a lot of the time humans suffer from thinking there's one particular thing that's, like, the greatest thing in the world or that it's massive, that it's the most important thing, like them or something else. It always gives me great pleasure to describe to people how insignificant they are," he concludes with a good natured laugh. Tame Impala are currently touring, hitting The Gov on Thu 20 May. Their debut album 'Innerspeaker' is out May 21 through Modular.  |
Issue 494
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