You already know the whole spiel about Tame Impala’s Currents. It was one of the most critically acclaimed albums of last year, it had multiple songs in the triple j Hottest 100, and took Tame Impala to the next level, yadda, yadda, yadda.

We’ve heard all that. What we really want to know is what’s going on with that album cover? Clearly it’s some sort of take on the title and the themes of the album, which are all about disrupting the natural flow of things, just like a pinball(?) in some… purple stuff.

Kevin Parker recently took to Instagram to shed a little light on just how he came up with the Currents album art concept, sharing the inspirations behind the image, including an example of uniform flow past a circular cylinder in a physics text book.

Parker, who’d previously pursued studies in engineering and astrophysics before forming Tame Impala, also took inspiration from an image of vortex shedding, which is another concept used in fluid dynamics, as well as this image of airwaves going over a car we tracked down to this Ford forum.

Currents album cover inspiration Pt 1 @robertbeattyart

A photo posted by Tame Impala (@tame__impala) on May 3, 2016 at 4:50am PDT

Currents album cover inspiration Pt 2

A photo posted by Tame Impala (@tame__impala) on May 4, 2016 at 5:10am PDT

Pt 3

A photo posted by Tame Impala (@tame__impala) on May 4, 2016 at 7:12pm PDT

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine