Currents

Why don't you tell us which album we are discussing today, please? We

are going to discuss the brilliant Tame Impala and Currents.

Currents is the breakthrough third album from Australian sonic wizard Kevin Parker's Tame Impala.

Released in 2015, the album saw the band push their psychedelic sound forward into groundbreaking new dancefloor pop territory.

There's guitar solos, there's woozy synths, and there's a bassline so iconic that festival revelers would go on to chant along to it for years to come.

I listen to all the time in the UK because it's just so groundbreaking and so cool and i love that australasian sound that it is just a bit kind of like it's a bit laid back it's a bit surfery it's all about just being cruisy and beautiful and just kind of like letting it all hang out um i love that and and the this very psychedelic i think listening to tame parlor always sort of stares like feels like staring into the sun you know

i like that sam Well, that leads on quite nicely.

When you put on Currents by Tame Impala, what emotions do you feel?

[upbeat music] Welcome to the Music Production Podcast.

This show is produced by Soundstock with over eleven million full tracks, music loops, sound effects, and music samples at soundstock.com. Today we'll dive into Kevin Parker's psychedelic production on Tame Impala's Currents and uncover how automation and virtual plugins turn studio tracks into shifting sonic landscapes.

Now let's get into the production techniques behind today's topic.

What makes Tame Impala's Currents so instantly identifiable as a psychedelic experience is the way Kevin Parker turns every track into an evolving canvas with automation and phase tricks that make each song feel like a shifting dreamscape.

This album proves that modern dial workflow can emulate and even extend the sonic playgrounds of nineteen sixties experimental rock.

Parker doesn't just lay down synth lines or drum beats in isolation.

The effect feels like an ever-stretching room where every beat seems to travel through space.

This technique, once a hallmark of tape echo units with variable delay lines, now lives inside plugins such as Valhalla Room or Ableton's Echo, but Parker leverages them as sculptable clip-based devices.

I mean, deadbeats, Does feel like the weirdly definitive album maybe for him.

I mean, Currents is always going to be that album.

But Deadbeat being this huge hit.

I wish I...

AAA aardvark.

So their next album was called Currents, July 17, 2015.

A aardvark.

This was the first time the album featured no other musicians besides Kevin.

By the time his Grammy-nominated second album Lonerism appeared in 2012, Tame Impala had become a huge critical and commercial success.

While releasing the albums Currents in 2015 and The Slow Rush in 2020, Kevin has also shared his talents as a performer and as a producer with artists including Justice, Gorillaz, Thundercat, and Dua Lipa.

The fifth Tame Impala album, Dead Beat, arrived in October 2025 with the singles Dracula and Loser becoming worldwide hits.

Today, I'm at home in Morden South London, and I'm joined by Kevin from his LA studio.

Uh, I started using the, uh, Soundtoys Echo Boy a lot with this, um, album.

To be honest, I don't know why I didn't, hadn't got into it before.

I was th- like, the last time I was kind of just using like, uh, the Currents and Slow Rush was kinda just, like, built-in Ableton delay and echo.

And, uh, Echo Boy just has, it has a really nice thing going on, you know? Um, it has this interesting stereo image that I can't quite put a finger on.