Ausbalia's Tame Impala led by Kevin Parker. have taken the classic psychedelic sounds of cream and '77le ~~hite Album·· era Beatles , rombining them with elements that <:an only exist in the modem age. Their debut 2010's lnnerspeaker.

"as celebrated by critics. a s well a s maJ..ing many end-of-year "Best Of' lists. 2012 sav.. the release of the enlhu s ias ticaUy raeived Loneri sm. whi<:h (l(k.-e again raeived gushing reviews . I sat down with Kevin in 2010. and again in February 2013. to talk about his five-year !Iansition from precocious young songwriter to regular featured fe s tival perfumer. and ho" disregarding common recording "'isdom can often haVe fanta stic results.

November 16,2010 What was your first l'eeording pi'Oject? When I was 12 my brother was recording himself on a

boom box playing drums, because he wanted to hear what he sounded !ike. When he was finished I walked in and recorded myself playing drums for 30 seconds. I realized if I played that back into a new tape deck, whilst also playing a keyboard along with it. I could multitrack myself, and then do it again with something like bass guitar. Of course, each time we did it it accumulated a ridiculous amount of mush; as soon as you did like three iterations of it, the thing that you did first was just static.

So you'r<e another graduate of the Boom Box Reeol'ding School! What was next'?

loti dad's friend lent me Cala!wall< (recording software] when I was about 14, and I used that for a couple ri year.;. Cakewall< served me pretzy v.eJ. ~ that the soundcard I had in my computer was not advanced enough so that I could play back audio while I was recording audio in. I had to set up a dick and record the whole song from meroory. I had to meroorize ~ng that fd done in the previous take. which was really difficult The first time I went to a stWio was in Pl!rth, Australia, and I didn't find it very enjcryab!e. All of a sudden I was out of this world where I was able to do ~ng for myself. I was in this time-ams!Jained environment where there were other professionals walking around te!ling me how to do things.

That really put me off. When was that? I was about 18 and in a band. We had won some recording

time in a stellar stiJdio with a proper engineer, as a prize for coming in second in a band competition. But as soon as I started it was like, 'What is this?" All of a sudden fm just the guy who plays guitar. I listened back to the recordings and they sounded honibl.e. It didn't sound anything like the way I was used to hearing it I didn't have a good first few studio experiences - it felt like as soon as another professional got involved they assumed they knew how things should sound more than me. I believed them for a while, like maybe they did know better, but then I just retreated back to my bedroom. I eventually decided that even if that was a crappier way technically, it was still closer to the way I liked things to sound.

HOW clicl the fint TaiM to be?

It was just a selection of five songs fR:IIR of 20 or 25 that I had done Oil'S a recorded songs on my own. and releasing them. I didn't think anybody them. I just shared them with my friends. got offered a recording deal from a labeL I 'Why not just put out these demos?" They were with it, because the songs had character.

recording methods were so shoddy! When chosen the five songs that sat together the best. we sent them off to Mandy Parnell for mastering in London. I got a call from her saying, "What? How am I meant to master this? There's no headroom!• rd mixed one of the songs on the little Boss [BR-864] 8-track until it sounded good and, without knowing it, I'd completely limited the whole thing by putting the master fader of the final mix up until it was flat lining! That Boss recorder has a feature where when it's about to start digital clipping, it limits it. B: gives it a great, crunchy sound that I loved. when I sent it to mastering she puUed it up and was just a flat line. She asked if I could mix it and I was like, '1 can't! I mixed it four years Each time you mix on this 8-track it's a

performance. I loved the way it sounded and her to work with it, but she hated it.

I noticed that you were routing guitar through that live.

'll!s. that's the ~me one. That'~ the DJ tone I U'>C for a frw

I diflt.rent songs. It'~ JU\t an Mremc OJ fuu \Ound wanted to ask bo t h . . ·

" 0 u t e 7-lnch nngle

Sundown 5yndrome." It was going to go on the album. but for som~ rea son

we left it off. I love the lounge-y Byrd~ songs. WP tra ked 't · h · ·

c. 1 Wlt Li.lm Watson at loc Rag [TapeOp UlS, 8B], we !ned new things, like a double-tracked kalOo for the solo. He's got 3 bunch of crary reverbs and echo units. One has a microphone at one end and a speaker at the other. He's got one of those origmal plate reverbs the size of rl door, which we ran the kazoo though. The label asked us to try recording rn a studro to help us get the feel for it. [in anticipation of] a future album. We were domg a double A·side. I've always been a massive fan of l.tam Watson. He's recorded Fabienne Delsol. and I loved his work with The White Stripes. Liam is one of my idols.

So you had your first positive studio experience? Yeah, you could say that. I trust Liam, so I was more

wiUing to just be "the guitarist and singer." The only reason I even stood over his shoulder at all is because I was curious to see what he was doing. Mic placement, drum compression, and the rest was up to him. I felt so out of my league; I was in absolutely no position to question him - I just let him do the Liam Watson thing. [Tame Impala drummer] Jay (Watson] and I just played the songs - I was in good hands.

Then came the lnnerspeoker album, which you recorded in a beach shack? [in lnjidup, south of Perth]

We were expected to do a debut album. I wanted to do it at home, but the label said I'd have to do it at a different location. They didn't want it to sound like the EP again! It had to be better. It took a while to convince them that I was going to make it sound somewhat professional. I asked my manager to get us some kind of shack by the beach. I figured we might as weU get some sort of romantic place. We booked it for six weeks, with a week in between. Since we had to step up the quality, we borrowed some preamps and compressors from a friend who owns a studio. We hauled aU of it down south in my car and a van, and set up in the living room of this holiday home (Wave House]. The little window-viewing area became the control room, and the rest of the living room was the tracking room. There actuaUy wasn't much need for a control room, since I was playing and the guy operating aU of the shit. There was a stone room downstairs. I had aU these intentions of recording some drums down there, but I never actuaUy got around to moving them. The main room was quite spacey and echoey. There were a lot of glass panels on one side, and plenty of wood.

Dicl you have to do anything to treat the IJMIGe in particular?

I thought. ''Ok.Jy, w~ miqht ~swell " I'm rr.~lly thankflll Tim was there with sugrJ~tions. I h~rl been using t11o microphones for the drums. and llhouqhl il w~s ~uit.c hi-fi. He wa•, Li~e. "Um, no. [Give th~m) more th~'' th.1l, and run t~m through t~ Nevr~." If that guy hadn't been therP. lhr album would havr, •,ounded a

whole lot cru~t iPr than it dor•s. I ran't r~corrl vor.1ls wilh othr.r pt'opiJI itnJund, l:wc.aus.'! the house '1/rJr., •.o opm, Dom IDormmr Snnper ba•;, and 'JUit>lf) and Tim wrrt• always around, •,o I did those •l hontf'.

What did you end up doing for the drums?

We had [Shure] SM57\ on the toms, but I don't thrnk Wf'

u~ed them much in the [final mix]. The mam drum mic that I used was an AKG 0190. l put that right on th~ side of the snare shell and compressed it in a way that sounded good. If you put a mic there, record. and play it back. rt sounds horrible. If you don't set the right attack and release. it sounds horrible; but when you reach the sweet spot. it sounds like the most perfect trip·hoppy, Portishead sound. It's really nice. Because the compression ends up being heavy - high-ratio and low threshold - it picks up the whole kit. Then, from there, you just put a bit of kick in. I was kind of spooked out about having a top mic on the snare that I wouldn't use. It just made me feel a bit apprehensive, doing the take; but since then I've teamed that having a mic on top of the snare is quite a useful thing for adding attack. An SM57 was on the kick, but as far away as possible. I hate that top-end attack that you have to try to get rid of. I prefer to not have it there in the first place. The kick drum had two heads on it and barely any [muffling]. It was a very lively room.

What did you record to? I tracked to a Boss [multitrack] unit again - a BR-1600.

I had become so quick with those that I decided to get the next model up. I knew there were better quality options, but because that format was so familiar to me, I went with something intuitive. It didn't sound as good as the BR·864 for some reason. Maybe they downgraded the 0-to-A converter or something.

How do you typically mic guitars? The typical SM57 in front of the amp, but nowadays I

barely use any amplifiers. I just DI guitar. unless I can be bothered to set up an amp. I always have trouble with amps. 01-ing a guitar adds this other layer of top-end presence that I find I'm always trying to get with an amp, but can't, even though I love the sound of a tube amp. I go from my pedals into a Seymour Duncan DI, which sounds amazing. and then into the mixer. I love the sound of bass through an amp though. When we were at Toe Rag the bass amp was the best I've ever pl.lyed through in my entire life, by far. It's the Selmer Treble 'N' Bass, like Spacemen 3

used, going through a Selmer Goliath lxlB [cabinet]. I've got a search going on eBay for a Goliath · in the year I've been looking, haven't seen one come up. I've got a Treble 'N' Bass. There are quite a few of them floating around, but the Goliath is rare.

Not ~ea~JN. At one stage we couldn't isolate the kick drum enough, so I ended up putting a quilt over the ,AlGie kit, eccept for the kick drum. nm Holmes [of Death In Vegas] was with us, encou~ging me ~ illt 111018 pufessional methods, like runmng the m1c

t;.:~ ...... Neve preamps and running the ~ass and

You have~ame disorienting claaic delay 10und• on the rec:ard. Do you u1ually do thOH in the box, or do you u ..

· tbrDugh an (Empirical Labs] Distressor. outboard eftedl?

CJ!r.'.Jr wt.:-'JOII Q 'hr<• ICJh V pcrlaJs ft

Did you have trouble mastering ogoin? Ma,JtPr'in(~ 1/f It r· -.(' l;eUL...: • ( . ~!It

fr~dmann [Tape Op #17] did How did Dave get involved? fhr· ldbel was looking for rom.-:me to tr.< ·~c aiL-:n.

They didn't tJ"lie-Je I cfJuld d<. it. and after awh:·e : didn't ctthl:r! We had offers fro;'l othl>r people, bl+ : dedin•:d h-?l.aiJ'.e I t.hou~ht th€-; .vould llk:ke •he re<.ord ~Jund .¥11 we~;onc el:;e. I didn'• wa~t to have arguments about pitcr corrcct1or· a~d beat repl.arem~nt. l mew that Nas the fht thing peopte

would do as roon as they $td•'ed mtn~. D<r1e "as the only person I wa1 wilbnq tr, •.ay yrv, to. a~d •t turnPd out he had . I'O 11• ~ free

Did you feel like you learned o lot in the mixing process?

Definitely. An astronomical amoLnl n Da·..e Do you see yourself seeking outside

production and mixing help with the next album?

I think I want to do it like the first album. l1l record everything, have aU the tracks I want. and then J'U take it to Dave after that. Especially since now I h<r.-e a better understanding of how he .vorks. and 11hat he likes to have before he mixes. Now I understand Nhat stage the tracks are meant to be at 11hen I tum them over, and what sort of things I should tell him to make him comfortable.

February 21, 2013 When did you start recording Loner ism? It happened pretty much as soon as I finished mixing

the last album. Before Innerspeaker was even released, reaUy. I didn't even know if the new songs would be for a Tame Impala album. fd bought a bunch of synthesizers and I was really into making synthesized pop music. I thought it was going to be a side project, or songs that I was going give to

someone else. After a while I realized I'd moved beyond writing songs that sounded like the last album. so I figured they might as well be for the next

Tame Impala record. Are you still using the Boss recorder? I bought a MacBook and started with GarageBand. We

were on tour. I love recording music wherever I am, so I was just using what l had. A friend of mine, who makes electronic music, said I had to try Ableton Live. I fell in love with it - I could not believe the world of possibilities of things you could do. It's different from Pro Tools. whrch I thrnk works best for bands in a studio environment. Ableton is made for electronic producers. Using an electronic recording platform to make psychedelic rock music just seemed to work. Electronic producers want to have easy access to things like filter sweeps and other ways of fucking with the sound like a OJ would. I'm always trying to find ways to make the psych rock sound less rock. To get it into the computer. I used a giant [Mackie] Onyx 1640i. I got it because I thought It

he I thing that would work for me. It has was t on Y faders and EOs. I'm at a surface level when it c_omes_ to stuff in the studio, and I loved mixin~ on a thmg Wlth giant knobs. So I carted it around WJth me for a long time. 1 went to Paris and recorded there and I took that giant Onyx mixer with me. Since then, I got a MOTU Ultralite, which is my new love. We've got three of them on stage at the moment.

What do you use them for on stage? We've got two MIDI keyboards playing multi-samples, so

that's the interface for both of the computers. .And you're using Ableton Live, live? Yeah, live live [laughs]. The third is for the drums,

because we mix them on stage to try to get the same roomy, crushy sound. [Nowadays] there's an infinite amount of people that want to stream your live show, and they do their own recording of it. There's nothing I hate more than playing a festival and having some guy in a van next door taking aU the feeds from the stage and mixing the drums different from how your front-of-house guy is doing it. They take all your tracks and spend about two minutes mixing them, ship that out. and then it's aU over the Internet. The gig you played was fucking rocking because it's loud; and then there's this YouTube mix where the drums sound like someone's tapping cardboard boxes. My way of battling that is mixing the drums on stage before they even go to the [front of house]. We've got mics on the kick, snare, and overheads; but there's also a mix going to the floor that's in stereo, and has a Distressor and a stereo Ranger on it.

An you still using the Boss unit on stage, by chance, for that guitar fuzz thing that you're doing'?

feah. We have two of them on stage actuaUy, one for Dom and one for Jay. I got obsessed with the way the guitar sound was, and I ha·1e less and less time for guitar ar-,ps these day:;. I lo1e the sound of DI guitar, but I ~ave a 'lot (AC30] on stage too.

You did a vocal take on an airplane at some point. How did that happen?

How did Toclcl Rurulgren get involved in remixing one of the 10ngs? . .

It was a record label thing. Wheneller there's a II!ITJ1X, it's nat us doing it. Some of them rum out awesome, ~ ~ sound like the per.;on only spent 45 minutes knocking it up.

Presumably you have to agree to it? We do; but at this stage, I'm not too fussed. That's one

battle that isn't worth fighting. Everyone knows that remixes exist, and now they happen even without the record label knowing about it. lf someone has access to the parts of a song, they can fuck with themselves and put an unauthorized remix on YouTube. I enjoy some of them. If they're really good, they might be

better than the original song. imagine you're a fan of Rundgren though, and that he doesn't do remixes like this often.

Right. This was one of those times when I was like, 'What? Todd Rundgren is going to do a remix?" The remix part seemed insignificant. Just the fact that he was going to be interacting with our music in some way was the big thing for me.

Lonerism is much more synth heavy. How did that happen?

I had some access to digital synths, and things in Ableton, but I never thought I'd use them. Then I was at my friend's sbJdio in Sydney and he had a rack of synths with a Sequential Circuits Pro One. One day I put my finger on one of the keys and I went fucking insane. He had the portamentojglide on; I played a lead line and I thought it was the most amazing sound I had ever heard. It had emotion, but it wasn't a guitar or anything organic; it was totaUy synthetic. I realized that it's a total misconception that synths belong in the '80s pop world. They can be just as fuckmg growling, terrifying, and ferocious as any stringed mstrument. So 1 was sold basicaUy. I went on eBay and got the exact same synth:

~i'd ~ i&>a for a rnPtody, and I ~new that I wa> going to forget it if l 11a1~e<J until I got off the plane. So 1

plu~g'-d in headphone> and ><~ng into my laptop. It wa' ·~ 'd•:·-n0] 1uca1 tAke. Don't gr~t thi> id~a of me going

After that. l got a [Roland] Juno-106. I started writing some songs on synths. At the time, I felt I had exhausted the. possibilities of the guitar. Which 15 not true, obviou~ly; but I ~eeded a break from playing guitar

You m~xed thlS one with Dave Fridmann again. Were you more involved in th process this time? e

itv trot to1let. lrJ(k\ng the dofJr, :.Hting up a mic, and ft nq ;,.p tmlet pafJ(:r roU ba'' trav- in the u,mer -,,,, v,rrebr)(}t Y'lf){Ying ou~ide and !Tlf' heinq like,

.t > minute•

e you're doing a song like "Be Above It," do you construct it over time and complete the idea in mixing?

rrr;;~ th: ''PP',".lte, I thin~ that rr,r,·,t of thr: maqic ~pe .. :; 'n th(· fir~! fen hc,ur•, r,f ""'~inq '"' d •,rmq.

'lrne I get tr, the "11/r·,g ~'"'J''• I'm t~rrifi~d "' an;tMnq. fher•:'s th:~ •ntang1blr: thinrJ thot

pc~r:1 in the f r~!. few hour' r1f r~r.rlfdinq, .;nd I

ke I ha1~ to hr,Ld rm to that If I r.h~nqr: "'I '(J(j 'hen rraybr l'rr. qoinq tr, unh1rm1nrjly

way ll'e r('ay,n thi:" I Sli::ttd rerwJir•q it That r+lru: ~r. t•a('J.:d ti~.e a mantrd. J.une

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Yeah. He >tiU kicks me out of the room for two or three h while ~ t . . our~

,' pu s It togt:ther. I give him a rouqh mix after domg a" much a~ I can to malo-.e it wund how I no ·I!J:· . . want, but

one " - ~n mala-~ a mix hh, Dave. I ~tiU don't know how he doe-" rt. !here i~ ju1t thi• depth . . , ' ' prl!SI;nce, and Impact that I cant get anywhere near; though l'vP been [lrrJud of my drum mi<(~. lately. ru qive it to him .­muqh rn!l and '.ily, "lh~> i•, what I'm l n Wl.~h the ha "' ''rlf' fadr·r with my d . 'VI g to do.. We11 . rum rnlz on It H ' I undr,r·.tand• wh<.rt I mr lx • '· d W<~y:;

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So I knOW that If l whole other ~ I another sessiof1, drums in "Endo!S loud. But t:hafs the

They lfl'/ that a pcdntUii Exactly. You never finish it,

went back; he spent an

bumped down the drums. sitting there pulling my frustrated. I asked him, "Mal"'- +o4f

a little bit? can you hear the can hear the difference." He changes we were making were back of the sun. People were is going to think that the synth louder, or it's too quiet in the mix. going to accept it for what it is. ®

www.tameimpala.cam

Special thanks to Doug Sutton, The and Matty Chequer.

bonus article:

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·~ [!]~ http:jjtapeop.comjinteiViews/95/tJ1rrle.inl

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