Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Apple Music

“At the end of the day,” Tame Impala‘s Kevin Parker shares in a new interview with Apple Music, “geography shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

“So much of [my] music, I started making in my bedroom,” he confides, “in a really dirty sharehouse in a very unglamourous place part of Perth, Western Australia.”

“When we started recording [InnerSpeaker] we had this beautiful place,” Parker continues.

The property he refers to is a beachside house four hours south of the Australian city of Perth where he and several of his bandmates worked on his debut album over a period of eight weeks.

“We rented this beach shack, mansion” Kevin recounts. “But the thing that I learnt immediately was that as soon as you’re in this beautiful environment making music everything already sounds beautiful because of what you’re looking at. I had this ocean view. So just like strumming my guitar once was like, ‘Oh that’s all I need to do.'”

No doubt he’s feeling nostalgic, Tame Impala’s InnerSperaker turns 10 years old on May 21.

His interviewer, Zane Lowe, then asks if he already had the Tame Impala sound figured out, ever before Parker started creating

“Sometimes,” Parker concedes. “In a way, it’s fully formed in my mind. It’s kind of just like flicking on the radio but I like to think I’ve never really had too much of an idea of what I’m doing. Part of the essence of it is not really knowing what you’re doing.”

The Tame Impala mastermind also reflected on his time working with Travis Scott on ‘Skeletons‘ from the rappers 2018 album ASTROWORLD.

“He’s so enthused by ideas,” Parker beams. “He doesn’t waste time doubting himself or doubting things. You need that burst of conviction.”

He also related that the creative process for the new album The Slow Rush had, a previously shared in an interview last week, more than a little assistance from mind-altering properties of pot.

“I’ll do anything that gets me inspired,” he reflects, “anything that kind of gives me, that puts me in… Causes those lightning bolts. Even with this album, I was doing things that made me uncomfortable just for the purpose of being creative because I’m the most creative when I’m uncomfortable… I hate being stoned in public, so I’ll like get stoned and go to the shops. I wrote a couple of… The start of one of the songs was from that.”

The full interview below.