与Tame Impala畅游时空、坠入迷幻
文/James Di Fabrizio
译/语非
Feb 20 2020
原文载于Vice网站
Kevin Parker would be feeling a lot less hungover right now if it wasn’t for last night’s beach rave. He’s been out celebrating his birthday until the early hours somewhere on the sandy coast of Fremantle, Western Australia. Although, he’s got every right to celebrate. After a five-year process, Tame Impala's new album The Slow Rush is finally released.
如果不是因为昨晚的沙滩狂欢派对，Kevin Parker也不至于像现在这样昏昏沉沉。他在澳大利亚西部的海滨城市弗里曼特尔的某处沙滩彻夜庆祝自己的生日。这值得庆祝，毕竟暌违五年，我们终于等来了Tame Impala乐队的新专辑《慢速冲刺》（The Slow Rush）。
The Slow Rush
The world has been waiting for this record. And Kevin—an infamous perfectionist—is, at last, ready for the masses to hear it. That’s why, on a blue-skied summer afternoon, he’s invited me to meet him at the home studio where he willed this album into existence. Hidden between surrounds of weather-beaten terrace houses, the average passerby would have no idea that some of the most influential music to come out of Australia in the past decade has been made between these walls.
全世界乐迷都在翘首以待，Kevin Parker也渴望大众聆听这张作品。正因如此，我在一个晴朗的夏日午后受邀参观他的录音室，这里正是作品的诞生之地。过往的路人可能无法想象在过去十年间澳洲最具影响力的独立音乐正是在这些饱经风霜的露台房屋中录制而成的。
Inside is a cornucopia of peculiar instruments, analogue synths, and recording gear. An old tape machine sits by a mixing desk. A sprawling collection of rare Roland drum machines line the wall. There’s guitars and leads and keys and just about everything else one would need to lock themselves up inside this place for a year and emerge with something sonically brilliant. But only one person has the ability to make all these tools sound like Tame Impala—and that’s Kevin. I ask him what a typical night in the studio looks like when he’s deep in the throes of making an album.
屋内可谓是各类古怪的乐器、模拟合成器和录音设备的聚宝盆。在凌乱的桌子旁边有一个老旧的磁带录音机，一排稀有的Roland架子鼓机陈列在墙边。还有吉他、电线、钥匙和其他物品，Kevin Parker会把它们尘封一年，等重见天日时，美妙的音乐也随之诞生。只有他能用这些乐器做出如“温顺的黑斑羚”（Tame Impala）一般的音乐。我问他，当深陷于作曲的痛苦时是如何在录音室里度过那些日日夜夜的？
“It’s like having a party by myself,” he says. “I bring booze, weed and food and I'll record all day, every day.” Parker has always been one for solitude. The joy of isolation has been a defining theme of Tame Impala’s music since it emerged as Perth's heir apparent to Australia's burgeoning psych-rock scene. Of course, a lot has changed since then. Once upon a time, Tame Impala played house parties. Now, the band headlines Glastonbury and Coachella. But as Tame’s profile grew, the anxiety Parker felt to succeed did so too.
“就好像独自举办派对，”他说，“我把烟、酒和食物带进来，然后没日没夜地录音。”Kevin Parker向来是个孤独的人。与世隔绝所带来的乐趣一直是Tame Impala乐队的主题，他也成为珀斯当地传承澳洲新兴的合成器摇滚风潮的领头人。当然，现在已不可同日而语。Tame Impala乐队以前办的是室内音乐派对，而如今他们成为了格拉斯顿伯里和科切拉音乐节首发阵容的常客。但随着乐队名声大噪，Kevin Parker对成功所带来的焦虑感与日俱增。
Tame Impala在科切拉音乐节
"The way I see it, I drink to escape the pressure and I smoke weed to escape overthinking things," continues Kevin. "At about 5pm, I’ll have a drink and a spliff and keep recording. I try to enjoy myself and wait until something comes to me, recording until I fall asleep—going deeper and deeper into that process. Because for me, it's a good way of escaping the pressure. It's almost like getting back to when I was a complete space cadet as a teenager.” He describes the feeling he’s chasing—when his overthinking tendencies are finally pushed away—as “raw, unhinged inspiration.”
“我喝酒是为了摆脱压力，我抽烟是为了减少思虑。”Kevin Parker继续说道，“差不多下午五点钟的时候，我会喝杯酒抽根烟，然后接着录音。我怡然自得，我一直等着灵感找上门来，一直等到入睡，我会不断深入其中。对我而言，这是逃避压力的好方法。就好像我又回到了爱做白日梦的孩童时期。”当他理清思绪后，他将他所追求的快感形容为“原始狂放的灵感”。
Kev offers me a beer and invites me out onto the back porch. The glistening chrome of three pointy ARIA Awards catches my eye. They're haphazardly aligned on a shelf next to two framed, Platinum-certified pressings of Currents—Tame Impala’s last album, released in 2015. The success of Currents proved a double-edged sword for Parker. Thanks to a stream of career-defining singles, the record elevated Tame Impala to a level of superstardom seen only generationally by Australian acts. That success is also at the root of the anxiety Parker was trying to escape while making The Slow Rush.
Kevin Parker递来一杯啤酒，带我到后廊转转。三座闪亮又尖锐的镀铬的澳大利亚唱片工业协会音乐奖杯吸引了我的目光，它们和两张装裱的白金销量认证的唱片（发行于2015年的Currents）陈列在搁板上。这张唱片所带来的成功对Kevin Parker而言是一把双刃剑。正是这张唱片中一连串足以鼓吹一辈子的单曲将Tame Impala乐队提携到超级巨星的地位，而这种成功也是他在录制新专辑时试图摆脱的压力的根源。
“I couldn’t even think about new Tame Impala music for a long time,” he explains. Instead, he spent his time DJing and producing for other artists. “Those things were just... they didn't have that pressure. They didn't have the weight of responsibility that Tame Impala has.”
“有好长一段时间我都不去考虑Tame Impala新作品的事情，”他对此解释道，他在这段期间做DJ并给其他音乐人做制作人，“做这些就没有压力了，在Tame Impala乐队时所承受的责任感也不复存在。”
On my way to the door, I wonder how heavy the ARIA Awards are to hold. I wonder if the Platinum records—a tangible sign of industry-sanctioned success—ever become stressful to have around. Outside, we recline onto couches beside a broken piano. There’s a small tin boat nestled among lush overgrown grass, ornamenting an otherwise empty backyard.
当时我在想，奖杯拿起来有多重呢？拥有着白金销量唱片（即意味着博得音乐产业认可的事业成功）是不是让人感到压力重重呢？我们走到室外，坐在一架破钢琴旁边的沙发。在茂密的草丛中横陈一艘小船，显得后院格外空旷。
To kickstart the creative process of what would ultimately become The Slow Rush, Parker rented an Airbnb in Malibu with a panoramic view of the ocean. The plan was to lock himself inside before emerging with a direction to take the album. But on a fateful night in August 2018, the hills of northern California—in which Kevin was residing—were 24 hours away from the most catastrophic wildfires the area has ever endured.
为了开始新专辑的创作构思，Kevin Parker通过爱彼迎在马里布租了一间海景房。他计划在闭关期间构思出专辑的制作方向。但是在2018年8月某天夜里，加州北部的某处山林遭遇了严重的山火，距离他的住处仅有一天的车程。
“It was apocalyptically windy,” Kevin recalls. “There were signs on the road blowing back and forth. I couldn't even go outside and smoke a spliff.” Instead, he went indoors and lost himself in a sea of drum loops and basslines until 5am. The next morning, he awoke alone to a menacing sky of crimson, brown and blue. Something was amiss.
Kevin Parker回忆道：“那天的风大得像世界末日一样，路标牌被吹得东摇西晃，我连出门抽根烟都不行。”他只好回屋里沉浸在音乐的世界，直到第二天早上五点，他醒来时看到天空一片深红，间杂着棕色和蓝色，看起来格外恐怖，他意识到事情有点不对劲。
“I went to turn on the TV and the power was out,” he continues. “So I went outside and there's this massive plume of smoke coming out over the hill. I was kind of hungover. Still in a daze. I couldn't tell if it was these weird cloud formations or if it was smoke. So I got on my phone and Googled ‘Malibu’. That's when this red banner came up: SOS. Evacuation Immediate. Malibu-wide.”
“我打开电视，发现停电了，”他继续说道，“我走到屋外，看到远处的山岗浓烟四起。我还有点宿醉感，头晕乎乎的。我不知道那是云层还是烟雾，所以我用手机查了一下本地情况，然后就看到了紧急求救警告和立即撤离的通告。”
2018年的加州山火
In a "weird panic", Kevin ran back inside. It was then that he remembered a voice at the front door occurring at 8am that morning. “I was like, This is a private Airbnb. I'm not supposed to be getting visitors. So I went back to sleep.” In actuality, it was the fire marshal telling everyone in imminent danger to get out, fast. As the gravity of the situation started to set in, Kev grabbed his vintage Hofner bass—an instrument that’s featured on every Tame Impala record—and his laptop, containing the demos he’d been working on and left. As black smoke billowed across the mountain behind him, Kevin escaped—driving the Pacific Coast Highway back to LA. By the day’s end, his rented house and everything else inside it would be nothing but ash.
Kevin Parker感到一阵异样的恐慌，他跑回屋里，猛然想起昨天早上八点时有人敲门：“我当时想，这是我在爱彼迎的私人住宅，我可不会接待陌生访客，然后就继续蒙头大睡了。”其实，那是消防队长挨家挨户催促住户尽快撤离。山火迫在眉睫，他只好抓起他那把复古版的Hofner贝斯琴（这把贝斯在Tame Impala的每一张唱片里都有出现）和储存着近期制作的音乐小样的手提电脑，然后在漫山遍野的浓烟笼罩下驾车逃之夭夭，他沿着沿海高速公路逃回洛杉矶。当晚夜里，他的租房和里面的一切都将化为灰烬。
“I was hypnotized by it,” says Kevin. “Flames were twice as high as these double-story buildings that were right next to it.” He unlocks his iPhone and shows me a video he took that day. Emergency sirens howl. Lashes of fire and smog suffocate the horizon. The Californian coastline is upended into sheer chaos. It’s apocalyptic.
“我被这景象震感了，”Kevin Parker说道，“火焰腾起比两层小楼还要高一倍。”他把他的iPhone手机解锁，给我看了一段那天他拍摄的视频：警报器轰鸣，一片火海和浓烟淹没了地平线，加州沿海陷入一片骚乱，简直就是世界末日。
In a sense, The Slow Rush is bookended by major natural disasters. While Kevin and I are talking in his studio’s backyard, two years on from California’s wildfires, Australia is being engulfed with devastating bushfires of its own. I’m reminded of the album’s cover-art, a hauntingly beautiful photograph of a home that's been overrun by tonnes of sand. At first, I thought it was photoshopped. But the place the photograph was taken in—named Kolmanskop—actually exists. To document it, Kevin and his photographer Neil Krug trekked deep into the Namib desert to enter a restricted area in southern Africa.
从某种意义上来说，The Slow Rush这张新专辑正是受到重大自然灾害启发而作的。在我和Kevin Parker在录音室的后院聊天的这会功夫，距离加州的大火已过去两年了，而现在澳大利亚也正遭受着同样的灾害。这让我想起了新专辑的封面——一张令人难以忘怀的、格外美丽的照片，一栋淹没于砂砾中的房子。一开始我以为这是PS而成的照片，但拍摄地确实存在，名叫卡曼斯科（Kolmanskop），是位于非洲南部纳米比亚境内的一处沙漠。为了拍摄这一景观，Kevin Parker和摄影师Neil Krug远赴纳米比亚的沙漠。
卡曼斯科
“As soon as we got there, we knew this album cover couldn't have come at a better time,” says Kevin. In the early 1900s, Kolmanskop was immensely wealthy from the precious diamonds that lay abundant deep in the earth below. But over decades, the land was mined barren. Slowly, the town became overrun by unforgiving desert sandstorms. Mountains of sand poured through doors. Dunes swallowed up buildings. Eventually, the desert consumed the town whole and rendered it uninhabitable—as if the Earth was taking back the land for itself. One could interpret this as a visual metaphor for Australia’s own relationship with mining, and the inevitable retribution that our climate may one day bring.
“当我们到达当地，我就知道我们来得正是时候。”Kevin Parker说道。在20世纪初，卡曼斯科地下蕴藏着宝贵的钻石，可谓富庶之地，但经过几十年的挖掘和开垦，这片土地日益贫瘠，慢慢地被沙漠所吞噬。沙丘漫过房门，淹没了楼房，沙漠最终消耗掉了整座城市，沦为不毛之地，仿佛是地球夺回了原本属于自己的土地。这张照片也暗藏着寓意，指涉澳大利亚当今的挖矿现状，而有朝一日人类终将饱尝气候变化带来的不可避免的报应。
“It really says so much about how people are feeling right now,” Kevin continues. In response to Australia’s own climate crisis, Tame Impala will donate $300,000 to bushfire relief efforts from their forthcoming tour. He slows for a second. “At this point, I think it's the responsibility of everyone to realize how urgent the situation is.” Among the peace and quiet of Kevin Parker’s backyard, I forget for a moment that fire, ash rain, dust storms and flash floods ravage the country as we speak. Kevin asks if I’d like another beer. I accept.
“这恰恰体现了当下人们的感受，”Kevin Parker继续道，“在当前这个节点，每个人都应该认识到事态的紧迫性。”为应对澳大利亚山火危机，Tame Impala乐队将从接下来的巡演中捐赠30万美元投入赈灾工作。在后院惬意的对谈中，我暂时地忘记了席卷全国的大火、火山灰、尘暴和洪水。Kevin Parker问我要不要再来一杯啤酒，我欣然接受。
In many ways, The Slow Rush is a meditation on the strange nature of time. Throughout, Parker sings from alternate realities; from future tense and past. He sings of lives lived and lives imagined. He sings of the way we revise memories on an infinite loop until—for better or worse—they become a photocopy of a photocopy of our original experience. Like most of Tame Impala’s music, it’s trippy—created through a warped lens of psilocybin and synthesizers.
新专辑The Slow Rush是对时光之本质的一次冥思。我们可以从中听到Kevin Parker从将来溯回到往昔，吟咏着虚幻世界。他所歌唱的是我们如何在死循环中修饰着对过往的回忆，直到这些记忆化为现实生活的影印副本。正如Tame Impala乐队的过往作品一样，Kevin Parker从致幻剂和合成器的扭曲棱镜中创作出新专辑，一如既往地迷幻。
Parker has long held a fascination with time and space. As a kid, he poured through yellowed pages of Stephen Hawking books. At university, he studied astronomy before dropping out to follow music. When I ask him about psychedelic experiences that have poked holes in his conscious understanding of time, he describes a transformational acid trip.
一直以来，他都对时间和空间有着浓厚的兴趣。早在孩提时期，他就热衷于翻阅史蒂芬·霍金泛黄的书籍。在大学期间，他主修天文学，而后辍学转行音乐事业。当我问及他对时间所体验过的迷幻经历时，他向我描述了一段迷幻之旅。
“I had this feeling,” says Kevin. “It's funny, because it actually stuck with me. I kept having flashbacks of it for years afterwards.” He pauses, searching for words that might translate the transcendental into something lucid. The only way I could describe it is like, ‘God’s hit record.’”
“我当时有种感觉，”Kevin Parker说道，“很有意思，这种感觉如影随形。在之后的几年里我都时常陷入回想。”他停顿一会，试图尽可能清晰地表述这一体验。我唯一能形容的就是，天选的流行唱片。
Of course, psychedelia is a hallmark of Parker’s music. On The Slow Rush, the prime example of this is Posthumous Forgiveness. A heady suite that takes place over two distinct halves, sung from two entirely different perspectives. Taken together, it creates a dialogue where hindsight and heat-of-the-moment feelings can collide. A masterful track, it took him ten months to complete. Ostensibly, the song deals with Kevin’s complicated relationship with his father. A child of divorce, Kevin “moved around a lot” when he was younger. He was split up from his brother because of it too. When his father died of skin cancer in 2009, the pair still hadn’t been able to see eye-to-eye.
迷幻感向来是Kevin Parker的音乐的特点。在新专辑中，单曲Posthumous Forgiveness就是一个完美的例证：一首分为两部分并通过两种截然不同的角度进行演唱的组曲，仿佛是后见之明与心血来潮之间的对话。Kevin Parker花了十个月才完成这首技艺精湛的单曲。这首歌讲述的是他与父亲之间复杂的关系，他来自离异家庭，自幼过着颠沛流离的生活，饱尝骨肉分离之苦，即使是他的父亲在2009年因皮肤癌逝世时，两兄弟仍然未能见面。
“The first half of the song is confused rage,” says Kevin. “This sudden realization that someone's fucked you over. The second half was deciding to forgive someone—the light after the storm; the clouds clearing. The song was a documenting of me finding that peace within myself. About how I got over it—which was realizing that humans do things because they're human. The way to forgive someone that's dead is to just forgive them. It's not a conversation, it's a decision.”
Kevin Parker对此解释道：“歌曲的前半部分饱含困惑与愤怒，就好像突然意识到自己的生活被人搞砸了一样。而后半部分选择了宽恕，好比雨过天晴。这首歌记录了我寻求内心平静的过程，我明白了人何以为人，而原谅一位死者的唯一方式也仅仅是原谅而已。这并非是一场对话，而是一种抉择。”
The sun is at its highest point in the sky now. Light is streaming into his backyard. Kevin and I head back inside, finish our beers and get ready to head out for a walk. As he goes to pull on his beaten-up Saint Laurent sneakers, a small mountain of sand spills out of them and onto the floor. He laughs. Last night’s beach rave strikes again.
日头正高，照耀着他的后院。Kevin Parker和我喝光啤酒，准备到外面散散步。当他拿起那双磨损的圣劳伦运动鞋时，有沙子从鞋里落在地板上。他笑了，那是昨晚的沙滩狂欢派对的缘故。
As we walk through the quiet coastal backstreets of Fremantle, I understand why Kevin is so comfortable here. Passers-by go on walking their dogs and offer a friendly hello; the town’s resident rock star largely left to his own devices. “At the age I'm at, it's easy to fall into a life where you're just going in circles,” says Kevin, unpacking the album’s opener One More Year. “Because by the time you’re in your late twenties, you've found your place. It's easy to get into a state where there's no new things coming in because you've found your comfort zone. The only way to break out of that is to say, ‘Right, fuck it. Let's do what we do for one more year, and then we'll get our lives in order.’” As he talks, I think about the countless millennials, now on the precipice of real adulthood and responsibility, whose youth has been soundtracked by Tame Impala’s evolution. I think about my own life, and how much it’s changed since I first saw Tame play a side-stage at the Big Day Out in 2010.
当我们走在弗里曼特尔的海边后街上，我明白了为什么Kevin Parker在这里是如此怡然自得：过往路人遛着狗，亲切地向小镇里的摇滚明星致以问候。“到了我这个年纪，很容易过上兜圈子一样的生活。”他对开篇单曲One More Year进行解释，“临近而立之年，你已经站稳脚跟，很难再接纳新鲜事物，因为你已经找到了自己的舒适区。若要打破这种束缚，你就要有勇于说出‘去他妈的，我要大干一场，一年以后再回来’这种魄力。”我当时就想到了千禧一代的年轻人，如今已经走向成年，开始担负起生活的重担，而他们在青春期就是听着Tame Impala乐队长大的。这也让我想起自己，在2010年的Big Day Out音乐节上首次看到Tame Impala乐队之后的这些年里，我的生活发生了多少变化啊。
The conversation turns to the album’s closer. In it, Kevin imagines himself exactly 365 days into the future with one hour left in the year. For a man who’s famously been associated with isolation, there’s something special in this song we haven’t heard from Tame Impala before—the idea of inviting others into your world, and enjoying the process of growing older alongside them.
在专辑的结尾曲目One More Hour中，Kevin Parker设想自己度过了一年三百六十五天，年终岁尾最后一小时的光景。对于一个向来乖张孤僻的音乐人而言，这首歌有着别样之处，仿佛是向众人敞开心扉，与自己一同享受成长的过程。
“It's about being on the edge of starting a new chapter. Stepping out into the world a new person. It’s about thinking, ‘How am I going to do this? How can I move forward? How am I going to go on with the rest of my life?’” For Kevin, the answer to those questions are simple: “Be yourself,” he says. “Do the things you like to do.”
这首歌关于脱胎换骨，开启人生的新篇章。我要做些什么？我如何前进？我该怎样度过余生？对Kevin Parker而言，答案很简单：做好自己，做喜欢的事。
We walk towards the pier, through the docks and into the full force of oceanic winds. Kevin tells me about his favorite old-school Italian restaurants in the area; he peaks through the window of an abandoned Chinese restaurant. He tells me how great the Batman Forever soundtrack is. He tells me a story about renting a metal detector to search for a friend’s wedding ring lost at last night’s beach rave (they found it) and about the ingredients to feel at home (“a weird concept, but where life moves the slowest pace.”) Finally, he tells me about overcoming the anxiety that lead up to releasing The Slow Rush—and what ultimately motivated him to start writing for Tame Impala again.
我们穿过船坞，顶着很大的海风走向码头。Kevin Parker告诉我当地他最喜欢的老式意大利餐馆，还路过了一家废弃的中餐厅，路上他跟我说电影《永远的蝙蝠侠》的原声带是多么棒。他还提到，他租了一个金属探测器去找一个朋友在昨晚的海滩派对中丢失的婚戒（最后找到了）。最后，他说道他在发行新专辑时是如何战胜焦虑的，以及是什么驱使着他创作Tame Impala的新作。
“It’s everything to me,” says Kevin. “Something I can call my baby. Because nothing else that I do in music is my baby as much as Tame Impala music. In a way, it's what my entire sense of self and purpose rests on. I realized that there’s something I get out of making Tame Impala music that nothing else can give me. It just took time for me to value what I wanted to get out of it, more than what I thought people were expecting from it.”
“对我而言，这就是一切，”Kevin Parker说道，“我可以叫它我的宝贝，因为我做的其他音乐都不如Tame Impala那样宝贵，我把全部的感情和诉求倾注于此。我发现从Tame Impala乐队中能得到从其他音乐所不能获得的东西，我过了很久才明白我想从中得到什么，而不是别人期待我去做什么。”
as long as I can, be the man I am.
本文仅供交流学习，谢绝商用。
去吧，但愿你一路平安
桥都坚固，隧道都光明。
编译| 语 非
审校| 知一否