Have you ever wondered what Tame Impala‘s music sounds like when you’re not quite near the speaker? Maybe you’re at a house party and you’re in the bathroom checking out your hair, or you’re in the basement shooting some pool to pass the time. No matter how you’ve imagined it, Kevin Parker has got you covered.
On Tuesday (March 31), he shared what he’s calling “The Slow Rush In An Imaginary Place” mix of Tame Impala’s latest album, The Slow Rush, that lets you live out your large social-gathering dreams in the midst of this socially isolated world.
The 57-minute long mix was announced via the band’s official Instagram page. “I made something for all you isolators out there,” Parker wrote in a post. “I call it The Slow Rush In An Imaginary Place. Headphones required for full immersive effect.”
Parker wasn’t lying. Just load it up on YouTube and you’ll immediately hear the difference. It’s thick with background noise and it adds new dimensions to the group’s already ultra-spacey sound. Songs like “Lost in Yesterday” and “Borderline” sound like kaleidoscopic lights are washing over a crowd of people in the next room. It’s not smart to party IRL right now, but at least you’ll know what it feels like to go to a function that digs Tame Impala.
It’s cool that Tame Impala have made this mix because it feels like an homage to the YouTube trend built around a similar sound. Songs by Billie Eilish, The 1975, and more have received “in the bathroom of a party” mixes on YouTube. The trend’s grown to even weirder places, such as listening to songs “while driving in the rain” and “you’re in a ’70s disco doing lipsync for your life.”
Now’s more of a time than ever to keep fans entertained with new mixes of music, so if Tame Impala were to release The Slow Rush renditions for “flying in a spaceship past Mars” or for “dancing while being sucked into a black hole,” that would be awesome. But for now, this immersive new mix does the trick.
Check out Tame Impala’s magical new The Slow Rush mix up above.
