Creating the artwork for Tame Impala’s “The Slow Rush”
In the 1910s, Kolmanskop was one of the richest towns in the world. With a casino, a concert hall, bowling alleys and an ice factory, as well as a school and a hospital, it was a little slice of luxury in the middle of the African desert – an incongruous mix of lavish European-style buildings and homes that wouldn’t look out of place in the Bavarian Alps, surrounded by windswept sands and brilliant blue skies. In its heyday, a million carats of diamonds were mined there in a single year – over 10% of the world’s total at the time.
By the 1930s, Kolmanskop’s diamond supply was running low, so its residents packed up and headed south. Now, the place is a ghost town. Sand dunes have engulfed its buildings, propping open peeling doors and filling rooms from floor to ceiling. Its crumbling buildings are slowly being swallowed up by the desert – creating an eerie ruin that now attracts thousands of tourists each year. Look it up on Instagram, and you’ll find 11,000 images.
This fascinating place also provided the inspiration for the cover art for Tame Impala’s new album, The Slow Rush. Photographer Neil Krug travelled to Kolmanskop with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker last year, shooting a series of images in buildings around the town and editing them to create surreal interiors in vivid blues and reds. There’s something familiar but otherworldly about his artwork, which perfectly captures the dreamy, psychedelic tone of Parker’s music.
The resulting images are designed to spark a sense of familiarity – of something half remembered or experienced - a feeling that Krug says he had a lot while wandering among the sandy ruins in Kolmanskop.
“When you look at these [artworks] I hope it just feels like a place in your mind - like it doesn’t exist but it does, or like you’ve been there before.
– Interview by Rachel Steven for The Creative Review
“‘The Slow Rush’ is Parker’s deep dive into the oceans of time, conjuring the feeling of a lifetime in a lighting bolt, of major milestones whizzing by while you’re looking at your phone, its a paean to creation and destruction and the unending cycle of life.
Parker told the New York Times earlier this year, “A lot of the songs carry this idea of time passing, of seeing your life flash before your eyes, being able to see clearly your life from the point onwards. I’m being swept by the notion of time passing. There’s something really intoxicating about it.”
The album cover was creating in collaboration with photographer Neil Krug and features a symbol of humanity all but swallowed whole by the surrounding environment, as though in a blink of an eye.”
– Press release via official.tameimpala.com
Tame Impala | The Slow Rush
Photography & Design - Neil Krug
Creative Direction by Kevin Parker & Neil Krug
Produced by Taylor Vandegrift/Cineaste Films
Production Support by MIA Films, Cape Town
Kevin Parker in Los Angeles
Kevin Parker | Rolling Stone Magazine Cover Story, 2015
Tame Impala | Lawrence, Kansas 2010