On The RCRD: Tame Impala
.jpg)
Tame Impala crafts music for long journeys. Tame Impala sculpts psychedelic mountains out of rubble that lesser artists wouldn't know how to fashion. Tame Impala makes classic rock for the electronic age.
Whatever route you want to take, this Australian group is doing something right. Their new album, Lonerism, is a massive leap forward and it's making lots of people outside the usual hype circles freakout. From the fried, hooky space attacks of "Endors Toi" to the dreamy stomped-out strut of "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" to the sandblasted Beatles indulgences of closer "Sun's Coming Up," it's one of the best rock records of the year, because we still don't know how much of a rock record it really is. There's too much to unpack and enjoy.
To shed more light, we got band member Nick Allbrook to go On The RCRD. Find out how Eno has influenced yet another life, the influences of terrifyingly pretty women and how the best quality in a song just might be conviction.
Life changing record for you was…
Another Green World, by Brian Eno. I bought the LP in Japan and love the kinda pop-art/cubist machine man aesthetic of it all. He's just wearing a singlet on the back, but making more groundbreaking, alien music than when he looked like a rhinestone wizard from Neon Genesis. Its electronic but human, pop but avant-garde. The chords and instruments are really lovely and emotional, but you're alienated from them because they are processed through an army of synths. It just makes it all more mysterious. Robert Fripp's guitar in St. Elmo's Fire should not be so deeply emotional, or even good at all because it's such a bombastic shred fest, but it is. I guess that's why Robert Fripp is Robert Fripp and not Yngwie Malmsteen.
What people, outside of music, have influenced you over the last year?
Franz Kafka, Peter Bibby, Cameron Avery, Sydney Nolan, Patrick White, Don Litz, really terrifyingly pretty women…
What did you learn about yourself and/or the world at large the last time you made a record?
Trusting people can work. So can fucking up.
What gift would you most like to possess?
Flight. And a leather bodysuit so i could go really high and look splendid at the same time.
What quality do you admire most in a song?
Conviction
What's your take on the music business in 2012?
Having a take on the music business takes from my own music business
Best instrument ever invented was....
What? the Korg Kaossilator 2, obviously.
