Since The Avalanches Left Me
It was late 2000, I was ten, and my Dad was just cleaning up the mess of pancakes I left him on a bright, frosty, Saturday morning. It was around 7 am and I was eager to switch over the channel to watch Saturday Morning Disney. Dad wasn’t having a bar of it though, because he loved ABC’s Rage kicking out the doors in the morning.
On this particular Saturday, Dad was in a really chipper mood; grooving to the likes of splendid picks from Rage that came in the form of DJ Shadow, and I think Portishead. But before we switched the channel, there was one track that he heard and then immediately tried to record on VHS the following weekend; the track was called “Frontier Psychiatrist” by an Australian electronic group called The Avalanches. They haven’t released anything since I was 10; I’m now turning 26.
(Full disclosure: I had planned to revisit The Avalanches debut later in the year for nostalgic reasons, but given that they’ve released fresh dates for new live shows I feel covering them now is more imperative than ever.)
Their only album, Since I Left You, released in 2000, has a musical foundation built upon one of the coolest terms ever coined: plunderphonics. The term describes a process by which music is sampled into something of a “sound collage,” and the album epitomises that sort of imagery; it has so many elements to it that never clash but, instead, just melt together like you would as you dive for shade under the humid Australian sun.
The album itself was a huge success and is considered one of the greatest albums to have come out of the country, a lot of which is attributed to how it immediately captures the free-running spirit of Australia in the early 2000's. Looping rhythms and blasting electric energy were all present, but the group still managed to find times for emotional response moments, such as the closing track “Extra Kings” which sent the album off into the salty ocean, wind at your back and sun warping the horizon through orchestral blasts, reversed beats, and distorted sounds rising up and down.
One of the beautiful aspects of Since I Left You is that it’s connected to so many other records through its sampling. Only recently, I found myself discovering US hip-hop duo, Camp Lo, and their track “Sparkle”.
Hear those vocals? Now, listen to “Diner’s Only”.
It took a good couple of years for me to just stumble across the connection between these two, but when I did the sense of discovery I had was something that is almost exclusive to electronic music. That washed out, shoulder-wriggling breakbeat coupled with the slick Camp Lo vocals work perfectly together, and it’s moments like that that continue to allow this album to stand the test of time.
And from “Diner’s Only” the album slides into the blissed out 4/4 rhythms of “A Different Feeling” that is one of the more fuller sounding tracks on the album, sampling a backyard party of kids and adults laughing together, while drums crash over what is probably some major Theremin fiddling.
But even then, the album is almost impossible to describe other than a collage of sounds that work perfectly together. A meticulousness that can rarely be found on records today and even back then. The group’s creativity with their sampling was something so constantly left field, that even their most well known track (and, just so you know, a track my dad loves to this day) “Frontier Psychiatrist” feels like their most marketable. This is a track that samples:
- neighing horses;
- a comedy routine;
- a parrot that shows up in the breakdown (which, according to former member Dexter Fabay, was actually some lady making shit up) and;
- an orchestral backing
I’ve probably missed 100 other possible samples because they’re everywhere, yet the track is almost instantly recognised for its primary sample: “that boy needs therapy!” They make it work because they have the ear for it, an ear that identifies every hole in a track and fills it with a dusty record that no one has thought of since time began.
Exciting it is then to see them announcing their first live shows since 2007, coupled with the very real possibility of a sophomore album release. Even more exciting and warming is that, after 15 years, we might see a return to that fun, free-spirited sound that they unleashed in 2000. Something we sorely need in this day and age.
