Tame Impala | TapeOp

Australia's Tame Impala, led by Kevin Parker, have taken the classic psychedelic sounds of Cream and "The White Album" era Beatles, combining them with elements that can only exist in the modern age. Their debut, 2010's Innerspeaker, was celebrated by critics, as well as making many end-of-year "Best Of" lists. 2012 saw the release of the enthusiastically received Lonerism, which once again received gushing reviews. I sat down with Kevin in 2010, and again in February 2013, to talk about his five-year transition from precocious young songwriter to regular featured festival performer, and how disregarding common recording wisdom can often have fantastic results.

November 16, 2010

What was your first recording project?

When I was 12 my brother was recording himself on a boom box playing drums, because he wanted to hear what he sounded like. 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're another graduate of the Boom Box Recording School! What was next?

My dad's friend lent me Cakewalk [recording software] when I was about 14, and I used that for a couple of years. Cakewalk served me pretty well, except 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 click and record the whole song from memory. I had to memorize everything that I'd done in the previous take, which was really difficult. The first time I went to a studio was in Perth, Australia, and I didn't find it very enjoyable. All of a sudden I was out of this world where I was able to do everything for myself. I was in this time-constrained environment where there were other professionals walking around telling 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 studio 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 I'm just the guy who plays guitar. I listened back to the recordings and they sounded horrible. 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 did the first Tame Impala EP come to be?

It was just a selection of five songs from a collection of 20 or 25 that I had done over a few years. I recorded songs on my own, and didn't bother releasing them. I didn't think anybody would like them. I just shared them with my friends. Then we got offered a recording deal from a label. I said, "Why not just put out these demos?" They were cool with it, because the songs had character. The recording methods were so shoddy! When we'd 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!" I'd 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. It gives it a great, crunchy sound that I loved. But when I sent it to mastering she pulled it up and it was just a flat line. She asked if I could mix it again and I was like, "I can't! I mixed it four years ago." Each time you mix on this 8-track it's a different performance. I loved the way it sounded and asked her to work with it, but she hated it.

I noticed that you were routing your guitar through that live.

Yes, that's the same one. That's the DI tone I use for a few different songs. It's just an extreme DI-fuzz sound.

I wanted to ask about the 7-inch single "Sundown Syndrome."

It was going to go on the album, but for some reason we left it off. I love the lounge-y Byrds songs. We tracked it with Liam Watson at Toe Rag [Tape Op #15, 88]; we tried new things, like a double-tracked kazoo for the solo. He's got a bunch of crazy reverbs and echo units. One has a microphone at one end and a speaker at the other. He's got one of those original plate reverbs the size of a door, which we ran the kazoo though. The label asked us to try recording in a studio to help us get the feel for it, [in anticipation of] a future album. We were doing a double A-side. I've always been a massive fan of Liam 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 willing 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 Innerspeaker album, which you recorded in a beach shack? [in Injidup, 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 well 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 all 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 actually wasn't much need for a control room, since I was playing and the guy operating all of the shit. There was a stone room downstairs. I had all these intentions of recording some drums down there, but I never actually 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.

Did you have to do anything to treat the space in particular?

Not really. At one stage we couldn't isolate the kick drum enough, so I ended up putting a quilt over the whole kit, except for the kick drum. Tim Holmes [of Death In Vegas] was with us, encouraging me to use more professional methods, like running the mic through Neve preamps and running the bass and vocals through an [Empirical Labs] Distressor. I thought, "Okay, we might as well." I'm really thankful Tim was there with suggestions. I had been using two microphones for the drums, and I thought it was quite hi-fi. He was like, "Um, no. [Give them] more than that, and run them through the Neves." If that guy hadn't been there the album would have sounded a whole lot crustier than it does. I can't record vocals with other people around; because the house was so open, Dom [Dominic Simper — bass and guitar] and Tim were always around, so I did those at home.

What did you end up doing for the drums?

We had [Shure] SM57s on the toms, but I don't think we used them much in the [final mix]. The main drum mic that I used was an AKG D190. I put that right on the 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, it 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 learned 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 D-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. DI-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 played through in my entire life, by far. It's the Selmer Treble 'N' Bass, like Spacemen 3 used, going through a Selmer Goliath 1x18 [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.

You have some disorienting classic delay sounds on the record. Do you usually do those in the box, or do you use outboard effects?

Live I use an MXR analog delay [pedal], but on the album a lot of that stuff was done in mixing. I tend to print effected guitar when possible — it's always going through my pedals first.

Did you have trouble mastering again?

Mastering went fine because I didn't mix it, Dave Fridmann [Tape Op #17] did.

How did Dave get involved?

The label was looking for someone to mix the album. They didn't believe I could do it, and after awhile I didn't either! We had offers from other people, but I declined because I thought they would make the record sound like everyone else. I didn't want to have arguments about pitch correction and beat replacement. I knew that was the first thing people would do as soon as they started mixing. Dave was the only person I was willing to say yes to, and it turned out he had two weeks free.

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

Definitely. An astronomical amount from Dave.

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. I'll record everything, have all the tracks I want, and then I'll take it to Dave after that. Especially since now I have a better understanding of how he works, and what he likes to have before he mixes. Now I understand what stage the tracks are meant to be at when I turn them over, and what sort of things I should tell him to make him comfortable.

February 21, 2013

When did you start recording Lonerism? It happened pretty much as soon as I finished mixing the last album. Before Innerspeaker was even released, really. I didn't even know if the new songs would be for a Tame Impala album. I'd 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 I 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, which I think 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 DJ 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 was the only thing that would work for me. It has faders and EQs. I'm at a surface level when it comes to stuff in the studio, and I loved mixing on a thing with giant knobs. So I carted it around with me for a long time. I 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 all 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 all 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 flanger on it.

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

Yeah. We have two of them on stage actually, one for Dom and one for Jay. I got obsessed with the way the guitar sound was, and I have less and less time for guitar amps these days. I love the sound of DI guitar, but I have a Vox [AC30] on stage too.

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

I had this idea for a melody, and I knew that I was going to forget it if I waited until I got off the plane. So I plugged in headphones and sang into my laptop. It was a [demo] vocal take. Don't get this idea of me going into the toilet, locking the door, setting up a mic, and putting up toilet paper roll bass traps in the corner — with somebody knocking outside and me being like, "Just a minute!"

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

It's almost the opposite. I think that most of the magic happens in the first few hours of working on a song. By the time I get to the mixing stage, I'm terrified to change anything. There's this intangible thing that happened in the first few hours of recording, and I feel like I have to hold on to that. If I change something then maybe I'm going to unknowingly take away the reason that I started recording it. That song, in particular, started like a mantra. Tame Impala music often ends up being these soundtracks to things in my head.

How did Todd Rundgren get involved in remixing one of the songs?

It was a record label thing. Whenever there's a remix, it's not us doing it. Some of them turn out awesome, but some sound like the person 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. If 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.

I 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 studio 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 portamento/glide 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 totally synthetic. I realized that it's a total misconception that synths belong in the '80s pop world. They can be just as fucking growling, terrifying, and ferocious as any stringed instrument. So I was sold, basically. I went on eBay and got the exact same synth. After that, I 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 is not true, obviously; but I needed a break from playing guitar.

You mixed this one with Dave Fridmann again. Were you more involved in the process this time?

Yeah. He still kicks me out of the room for two or three hours while he puts it together. I give him a rough mix after doing as much as I can to make it sound how I want, but no one else can make a mix like Dave. I still don't know how he does it. There is just this depth, presence, and impact that I can't get anywhere near; though I've been proud of my drum mixes lately. I'll give it to him with the rough mix and say, "This is what I'm trying to do." We'll have one fader with my drum mix on it. He always understands what I mean because he understands this kind of music. Sometimes he'll get it on the first shot, and other times we'll be sitting there until midnight. There's always the eternal trying to get it closer to "perfect." The closer you get, the more frustrated you become that you're not quite there. We mixed the whole album. I left, but later I thought, "Oh shit, there are a few things I want to try." I wrote an email saying, "Dave, you're going to think I'm stupid, but..." He's works in analog, so every time he does a recall it takes time. He's got to repeat every setting. So I know that if I want to ask him to do a recall, it's a whole other day. I actually flew back to New York for another session, essentially to nudge the fader on the drums in "Endors Toi" because I thought they were too loud. But that's the thing — he understands.

They say that a painting is never done.

Exactly. You never finish it, you just run out of time. So I went back; he spent an hour doing the recall, and we bumped down the drums. That was it. At one point I was sitting there pulling my teeth out because I was frustrated. I asked him, "Maybe turn down the top snare a little bit? Can you hear the difference, Dave? Tell me you can hear the difference." He said, at that point, the changes we were making were like picking lint off the back of the sun. People were not going to notice. No one is going to think that the synth line could have been louder, or it's too quiet in the mix. Hopefully people are going to accept it for what it is.