'Been busy': Kevin Parker teases new Tame Impala music
Parker posted a series of photos on Instagram, including one of him in the studio, one containing a progress chart of a track list - many marked with the word 'done' alongside them.
The post also included a snap of Parker posing with his wife Stephanie Lawrence, who is pregnant with the couple's second child.
The Australian rocker captioned the upload: "Been busy."
Tame Impala's website also suggests that new music after a cryptic update suddenly appeared that altered the site's interface. Intriguingly, the page's source code has also been changed and the message "iwaitedtiltheendofsummerandiranoutoftime" can be found.
Parker collaborated with Dua Lipa by serving as a producer on her 2024 album Radical Optimism and enjoyed the "wild" experience of joining the British pop star on stage at the Glastonbury Festival last year.
He bonded with Lipa as they worked on the album and he was impressed at the superstar's lack of "ego".
He explained: "The energy Dua creates in her creative space is one of no ego - we all noticed there were no huge personalities in the room trying to dominate the process.
"When you speak to other writers, they've all got nightmare experience of people who were too big for the room."
Kevin Parker has cryptically suggested that new material from Tame Impala could be on the way as fans eagerly await a follow-up to 2020's The Slow Rush.
Parker posted a series of photos on Instagram, including one of him in the studio, one containing a progress chart of a track list - many marked with the word 'done' alongside them.
The post also included a snap of Parker posing with his wife Stephanie Lawrence, who is pregnant with the couple's second child.
The Australian rocker captioned the upload: "Been busy."
Tame Impala's website also suggests that new music after a cryptic update suddenly appeared that altered the site's interface. Intriguingly, the page's source code has also been changed and the message "iwaitedtiltheendofsummerandiranoutoftime" can be found.
Parker collaborated with Dua Lipa by serving as a producer on her 2024 album Radical Optimism and enjoyed the "wild" experience of joining the British pop star on stage at the Glastonbury Festival last year.
He bonded with Lipa as they worked on the album and he was impressed at the superstar's lack of "ego".
He explained: "The energy Dua creates in her creative space is one of no ego - we all noticed there were no huge personalities in the room trying to dominate the process.
"When you speak to other writers, they've all got nightmare experience of people who were too big for the room."
Kevin Parker has cryptically suggested that new material from Tame Impala could be on the way as fans eagerly await a follow-up to 2020's The Slow Rush.
Parker posted a series of photos on Instagram, including one of him in the studio, one containing a progress chart of a track list - many marked with the word 'done' alongside them.
The post also included a snap of Parker posing with his wife Stephanie Lawrence, who is pregnant with the couple's second child.
The Australian rocker captioned the upload: "Been busy."
Tame Impala's website also suggests that new music after a cryptic update suddenly appeared that altered the site's interface. Intriguingly, the page's source code has also been changed and the message "iwaitedtiltheendofsummerandiranoutoftime" can be found.
Parker collaborated with Dua Lipa by serving as a producer on her 2024 album Radical Optimism and enjoyed the "wild" experience of joining the British pop star on stage at the Glastonbury Festival last year.
He bonded with Lipa as they worked on the album and he was impressed at the superstar's lack of "ego".
He explained: "The energy Dua creates in her creative space is one of no ego - we all noticed there were no huge personalities in the room trying to dominate the process.
"When you speak to other writers, they've all got nightmare experience of people who were too big for the room."
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Sydney Morning Herald
35 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘I think chess is sexy': How a teen's gambit led to love
I n the northern spring of 2020, 16-year-old Jasmine Paton shut herself in her bedroom and stayed there for more than two years. 'It started in the first COVID lockdown,' she explains on a call from her family home in north-west London. 'I couldn't see my friends or my dad or do my GCSE [year 11] exams. I got really, really depressed.' Her mother organised help – a psychiatrist, medication, weekly phone calls with the family GP – but Paton refused to leave her room and was self-harming. 'People kept advising me to take up a hobby,' she recalls, 'I knew how to play chess, so eventually I started playing online. And I remembered: I love chess! I had bad insomnia so I would play literally for 10 hours straight through the night.' She gave herself a male name, uploaded a profile picture of her cat and one day randomly chose to challenge a player with the tag name ChessGoon. 'We started playing and I really loved his style but I did not like that he beat me – I had a stronger rating than him.' After some time, they began messaging, commenting on the games: 'He had a more aggressive style, it's called 'Romantic'; I'm quite a boring player actually, I like to weasel a slight advantage, get to the end game and win from there. He would go for the most insane 'check me in one' tactics. I mean, I'd obviously see it and I'm like, 'I'm not going to fall for that.' ' So you were both fascinated and annoyed by each other? 'Yes, we were quite rude, making chippy little comments. Then one day I wrote: 'Can't believe you just lost to a teenage girl.' (By this time, Paton was 18.) He goes, 'What?! I thought you were a middle-aged old man; you play like one.' ' Intrigued, Paton searched ChessGoon on Instagram: 'Oh my god, he was young and attractive; I hadn't really thought of him as a person.' Her opponent was Anthony Arena, a 24-year-old data analyst from New York. When I call him, he is keen to talk. 'This is my favourite story to tell,' he says. 'It's changed my life. When we played I won at first, then she was winning and we got into the banter: I thought, 'This guy is funny, I could really be friends with him.' Then one day I got this message: 'You're getting your butt kicked by an 18-year-old girl.' I had no idea! We started video chatting and it became romantic. I had to meet her and I booked a flight to England.' It was August 2023. Paton left the refuge of her bedroom and went to pick Arena up at London's Heathrow Airport. How was it, I ask her, meeting in real life? 'I don't want to be all romantic and corny,' she says doubtfully. Go ahead, I say. 'Well, I just ran up and hugged him. From that moment we have been best friends; we love each other so much.' Since then, the two have been back and forth between London and New York, and Arena, now 27, is in the UK for Paton's 21st birthday. We meet at her home in a street of large Edwardian houses overlooking London's Queen's Park. Paton has three siblings and three step-siblings; two of them are snacking in the big sunny kitchen and greet me warmly. 'I love Jas's family,' enthuses Arena, 'they always make me so welcome. I play chess with her dad.' Loading Today they're going to a favourite haunt, the Chess and Bridge Store in Baker Street, and I'm tagging along. We stroll through the park shaded by big horse chestnut and plane trees in full summer greenery. It's mid-June and hot; they are both in shorts. Arena has an athletic figure and is a good 20 centimetres taller than Paton. They link hands all the way – through the park, crossing streets and on the underground. At an escalator, we find ourselves briefly separated in single file. 'Why are you so far from me?' frowns Paton. He smiles and reaches for her hand. On the pavement outside the Chess Store, there are tables set up with boards: 'If you're on your own and sit down at one,' says Paton, 'very soon someone will challenge you to a game. There are loads like this in New York, which I love.' But today the tables are in full sun and we retreat indoors to sit at a chess board in the relative cool. They are greeted by a staff member and the three exchange chess gossip. Paton says that a member of the English chess team was at her home for dinner the night before; Arena glances at her: 'Am I allowed to say?' he asks. 'I beat him.' She laughs, 'He was probably distracted by me and my mum chewing his ear.' While the other two continue gossiping, I notice Arena is silently moving pieces around the board. He sees me watching: 'Oh, I'm rehearsing that game; I do this a lot.' He returns to the board: 'Ah yes, here and here,' he mutters, 'sack the bishop … then I think I castled.' Paton says they used to analyse chess games from opposite sides of the Atlantic: 'We'd choose a famous game; he'd take his board to a cafe, I'd take mine to the park and we'd play through the moves.' 'To begin with, everything was so new, we were both in love with chess and falling in love with each other.' Anthony Arena 'To begin with,' says Arena, 'everything was so new, we were both in love with chess and falling in love with each other.' Paton nods and adds: 'But it wasn't yet expressed; they were intense games, quite flirty, as you can imagine. I think chess is sexy: you have to be really sharp and creative; it has all those tropes you look for in a person. We'd be on FaceTime and I'd look at him, so passionate and concentrated.' Later they would go on virtual dates: 'I'd take her to Wagamama,' says Arena, 'her dinner, my lunch, we'd both have sushi.' 'Shall we play a game?' he suggests. They face each other: 'She likes to set up her knights like this,' he says. 'Now there's a couple of ways I can go … I used to have this opening, it did well against different people then Jas just decimated it.' Paton shrugs: 'It's so obvious and predictable,' she mocks. They are both highly rated players, used to winning. In the depths of her depression, Paton had found a safe place playing fiercely competitive games online with the unknown American. 'I've watched her grow,' says Arena, 'building herself from rock bottom, coming off her meds, getting to university.' Paton is doing a psychology degree, has a side hustle tutoring young chess players, and has mended relationships lost during her depression. But she still recalls the darkest of times. 'I want to say that chess saved me,' she confesses, 'but really it was my mum. The depression had taken away my voice; I couldn't speak to anyone because I didn't have anything good to say. Seeing the pain in my mum's eyes, it just killed me. I'd been reading about the culture and history of chess so I would tell her about that, then we could talk about something apart from how I was feeling.' Her mother, Camilla Lewis, runs a TV production company and those conversations produced a light-bulb moment for her. 'Through Jasmine, I discovered the chess community was huge – six million people playing regularly in the UK alone,' Lewis recalls. 'I woke up one night and thought, 'Hang on, there's no chess on television. Why not?' ' Lewis's company, Curve Media, went on to produce a show for the BBC pitting 12 rising chess stars – six women and six men – against each other. There were competitors' backstories, jeopardy and excitable commentary but Chess Masters: The Endgame was not telegenic like Bake Off or MasterChef. The Guardian 's reviewer called it 'so dull it's almost unwatchable'. Even so, it did well enough for the BBC to consider a second series and, according to Lewis, it is now headed for Australian screens. 'There are two broadcasters bidding for the rights,' she tells me when I call her. 'It's very exciting.' The NSW Chess Association's Rupert Coy is hopeful the show will raise the game's profile, particularly if it encourages more women to play. 'According to ChatGPT, only eight per cent of Australian chess players are female,' he says. 'There are some very talented players among them – the NSW Blitz Championship in November last year was won by a schoolgirl – but we would like to see more coming through.' Online chess took off during COVID, while the film The Queen's Gambit was expected to entice more women to take up the game. But after an initial flurry of interest, the numbers remain stubbornly low. Several female players told Good Weekend that young girls take up the game in primary school but drop away in their teen years. NSW top player Kris Quek says the gender gap discourages them: 'There are so few other [chess-playing] girls to be friendly with and friendship is really important, particularly in secondary school.' Loading Junior chess champion Athena-Malar Retnaraja agrees: 'Girls give up chess to play a different sport to be with other girls,' she says. 'My older brother plays and we go to the same competitions; I would definitely feel more lonely without him.' Adelaide writer and academic Katerina Bryant says the chess landscape is so male-dominated that as a player, she frequently felt as if she were the sole representative of her gender. 'And you could feel the hostility in some places. I play mostly online now because of that; even so, there is online abuse of women players despite moderating.' I tell her the story of Jasmine Paton and Anthony Arena falling in love over chess. Isn't there something potentially rather sensual about the intimacy of the game – the frisson of locking eyes with your opponent as you consider the next move? Bryant laughs – her partner is also a chess player. 'Oh, I'm not looking at him, I'm staring at the board and thinking how I can crush him.' Back in London, the two young lovers agree to call their game a draw and we go next door for a cup of tea. I ask if they think of moving countries to be together. They do, of course, but where? 'It would be hard to leave my chaotic family,' admits Paton, 'and I'm young, still studying.' Arena agrees it's difficult: 'With my family and stuff, I'm the eldest, I'd have things to sort out.' His face clears: 'But I'm here now, Jas will be in New York in July, and we're committed to making it the best summer ever.'
Sydney Morning Herald
35 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘She doesn't want to upset people - I probably do': Bella Freud on sister Esther
Fashion designer Bella Freud, 64, and her novelist sister Esther Freud, 62, are daughters of artist Lucian Freud and great-granddaughters to Sigmund. They were raised by their mother in the UK and Morocco. Esther: Even as a child, Bella had a lot of power. She was bright and capable and often angry, but she had such charisma. She would create situations that felt very daring and exciting. When she was nine, she became a passionate, paid-up member of the World Wildlife Fund. She found an old pram and we went from door to door for donations. I was about seven, and a neighbour reported she'd seen me straining to push this enormous, junk-filled vehicle up the road, with Bella sitting on top. When my mother asked about it, I thought, 'No, no: they don't understand. She allowed me to push her.' That's how powerful she was. Loading Interestingly, I don't think I was ever the subject of her anger. And she also had this enormous capacity for lighting up life; she was incredibly beguiling. Even now, I can say things to her that I can't say to anyone else. I can exaggerate my feelings with her, try things out on her. It's almost like a twin relationship, in that way: this alliance right at the centre of our lives. Sometimes, I think, 'Oh, I'll try not to talk to Bella about this', but I always crack. There just isn't anyone else who can unwrap life for me like her. I have mined my childhood for 35 years [as a fiction writer; her latest novel, My Sister and Other Lovers, is out now.] Some of it is very close to Bella and me, but she's like our father. I once wrote a character clearly based on him, and he said, 'For a horrible moment, I thought he was me, then I remembered, 'Oh no, I don't wear a watch.' ' Bella just says, 'It's fiction', and gives me her blessing. This last book, she said: 'Be sharper, harsher, clearer. Don't worry about hurting my feelings.' It was fabulous. 'I can exaggerate my feelings with Bella, try things out on her. It's almost like a twin relationship, in that way.' Esther Freud Just very recently, she's started her own writing: these beautiful little Sunday stories on Instagram. It's been so illuminating for me. As a child, I was caught between her and my mother – both very strong, fiery, outspoken – always just hoping things would settle down. Now I realise she was unhappy. She had a difficult relationship with our mother; she found the itinerant life we were leading, which actually rather suited me, extremely painful and difficult. It was like clear water, clear air, to finally understand that. And she seems so at peace and happy now; more compassionate for the past, for herself, for our family. I've always been so proud of her. When she first started to design clothes back in the '90s, she'd have these incredible catwalk shows with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Susie Bick [now Cave]. I've never been brilliant at clothes: I once tried on this lovely, soft, brushed-cotton brown shirt with her and she just said, 'Never, ever buy something unless it really suits you.' I said, 'But it's so comfortable!' and she just looked at me with this look – she lowers her eyes, then raises them – and said, 'Stop it.' Now she gives me things, utterly beautiful things. Some of them I've honestly worn for 25 years.
The Age
35 minutes ago
- The Age
‘She doesn't want to upset people - I probably do': Bella Freud on sister Esther
Fashion designer Bella Freud, 64, and her novelist sister Esther Freud, 62, are daughters of artist Lucian Freud and great-granddaughters to Sigmund. They were raised by their mother in the UK and Morocco. Esther: Even as a child, Bella had a lot of power. She was bright and capable and often angry, but she had such charisma. She would create situations that felt very daring and exciting. When she was nine, she became a passionate, paid-up member of the World Wildlife Fund. She found an old pram and we went from door to door for donations. I was about seven, and a neighbour reported she'd seen me straining to push this enormous, junk-filled vehicle up the road, with Bella sitting on top. When my mother asked about it, I thought, 'No, no: they don't understand. She allowed me to push her.' That's how powerful she was. Loading Interestingly, I don't think I was ever the subject of her anger. And she also had this enormous capacity for lighting up life; she was incredibly beguiling. Even now, I can say things to her that I can't say to anyone else. I can exaggerate my feelings with her, try things out on her. It's almost like a twin relationship, in that way: this alliance right at the centre of our lives. Sometimes, I think, 'Oh, I'll try not to talk to Bella about this', but I always crack. There just isn't anyone else who can unwrap life for me like her. I have mined my childhood for 35 years [as a fiction writer; her latest novel, My Sister and Other Lovers, is out now.] Some of it is very close to Bella and me, but she's like our father. I once wrote a character clearly based on him, and he said, 'For a horrible moment, I thought he was me, then I remembered, 'Oh no, I don't wear a watch.' ' Bella just says, 'It's fiction', and gives me her blessing. This last book, she said: 'Be sharper, harsher, clearer. Don't worry about hurting my feelings.' It was fabulous. 'I can exaggerate my feelings with Bella, try things out on her. It's almost like a twin relationship, in that way.' Esther Freud Just very recently, she's started her own writing: these beautiful little Sunday stories on Instagram. It's been so illuminating for me. As a child, I was caught between her and my mother – both very strong, fiery, outspoken – always just hoping things would settle down. Now I realise she was unhappy. She had a difficult relationship with our mother; she found the itinerant life we were leading, which actually rather suited me, extremely painful and difficult. It was like clear water, clear air, to finally understand that. And she seems so at peace and happy now; more compassionate for the past, for herself, for our family. I've always been so proud of her. When she first started to design clothes back in the '90s, she'd have these incredible catwalk shows with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Susie Bick [now Cave]. I've never been brilliant at clothes: I once tried on this lovely, soft, brushed-cotton brown shirt with her and she just said, 'Never, ever buy something unless it really suits you.' I said, 'But it's so comfortable!' and she just looked at me with this look – she lowers her eyes, then raises them – and said, 'Stop it.' Now she gives me things, utterly beautiful things. Some of them I've honestly worn for 25 years.
