Over the last few years I’ve often come across this statistic that said something to the effect of, “If you aren’t listening to a certain band or type of music by the time you’re in your 30s, you have almost no chance of listening to that band or music.” (This article seems to place the age cutoff at 30, though other sources place it at somewhat older). A combination of a stronger focus on nostalgia and our brains’ naturally reduced tendency to be receptive to new things is responsible for this. While I think of myself as somewhat of an outlier because my taste in music made a very drastic shift starting in the months before I turned 30 and continued for a few years after, I’ve definitely noticed that I consume far less new music now, at the ripe old age of 37, than I did even 2 or 3 years ago.
This is a very long-winded leadup to talking about Australian duo The Avalanches, who I only started listening to in December, but it’s been pretty much 6 straight weeks of listening to the same 3 albums over and over and over. I’m grateful to my friend Cody for telling me about their late-2020 album drop and highly recommend that any music fans older than 30-whatever get themselves a younger friend to keep you in the loop about these types of things.
If you read The Avalanches’ wikipedia page, the first 2 genres associated with them are “plunderphonics” and “sampledelia,” which just goes to show that the universe of music genre labels makes absolutely no sense and often tells you nothing about anything. The Avalanches make sample-based music (is this “sampledelia”??) that I would describe as disco with a side of hip-hop.
The Avalanches first album, “Since I Left You,” came out in 2000, and it was a long 16 years before their second album, “Wildflower.” I, of course, was blissfully unaware of this gap. When album #3, “We Will Always Love You,” dropped last month and Cody told me about it, I said, “wait…was this the band you told me about a few years ago where there was some ridiculously long time between their first and second albums?” It was, and while I have no idea why I didn’t actually listen to them in 2016, I’m glad I finally got on board.
The thing I’ve most enjoyed while listening to hours and hours of The Avalanches over the last 6 weeks has been the moments of sheer delight I’ve experienced over how creative their sampling is. Sample-based music is just what it sounds like – using samples of other songs, usually from vinyl, and chopping them and mixing them up – sometimes adding in new vocals or live instrumentation – to create something entirely new. Like any art form, it can be done simply or complexly (is this a real word? Don’t care!) and my totally untrained, non-expert assessment of The Avalanches is that they are very, very good at what they do. So many times while listening through their discography I’ve thought, “Holy shit I can’t believe they thought to do this.”
Here are a few highlights:
The Noisy Eater. This song gained the highest praise I can offer to music which is that I laughed out of joy while listening to it. The surprise sample of a children’s choir singing “Come Together” by The Beatles absolutely slayed me.
ETOH. The song kind of swirls around until about halfway through it gets into this very groovy electro-funk vibe. This is from their 2000 album but sounds way more current.
Wherever You Go. I was drawn to this song because it has a great beat and a subtle sample of Maghalena, a Brazilian song from the 90s that I love even though I have no idea why I even know it in the first place. When I looked up the “Wherever You Go” video for this blog post, I learned that it also samples the Voyager Golden Record, a compilation of music and sounds coordinated by Carl Sagan in the late ’70s and launched into space via the twin Voyager probes. Because of this, during quarantine The Avalanches managed to record a version of this song with the International Space Station Orchestra, which is…a thing! All of this makes me so happy.
Frankie Sinatra. I don’t even know what to say about this. It’s so weird and I just love it. I deliberately didn’t include the actual music video because it’s so bonkers that I thought it detracted from the song, which is kooky enough on its own.
Frontier Psychiatrist. The first comment on this YouTube video is, “This video is like one of those weirdly upsetting dreams you’d never consider trying to describe to someone” and I could not say it better. The actual song is kind of haunting but I love it.
Did you listen to any of these songs? Do you already know and love The Avalanches? Let me know! Maybe now I can release myself from The Avalanches and listen to…something else?!
This was the first “Artist Spotlight” post I’ve written in over 3 years. Whoops. Hopefully not another 3 years until the next one.
Not My Forte 