The Avalanches – Since I Left You

A TAV Essential Listening Album.

Since I Left You is the debut studio album by Australian electronic music group The Avalanches, originally released in 2000 on Modular Recordings and produced by The Avalanches' members Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann (under the pseudonym Bobbydazzler).

The album uses sampling extensively, containing an estimated 3,500 samples from various genres of music. The album was created in two separate near-identical studios by Chater and Seltmann, exchanging audio mixes of records they sampled. - Wiki

“In releasing Since I Left You, the Avalanches have essentially brought hundreds of slabs of inanimate vinyl to life. Though it was no doubt meticulously constructed, this is an album brimming with spontaneity, joy, sadness, humor, reflection, and general human-ness. With its high fun factor and subtle traces of deeper emotion, Since I Left You is the perfect record for the party, and for the period of regret and recovery after the party.” - Pitchfork

"In music, misery’s got a monopoly on credibility — just ask Thom and Trent. A furrowed brow and a tormented soul are essential if you aspire to “deep.” “Happy,” however is tough to pull off without seeming smugly serene, irritatingly jaunty, or simply simple-minded. There are exceptions of course — Al Green, Brian Wilson, and most Krautrockers could all rejoice without coming across as pretty vacant. Now, Australian dance six-piece the Avalanches join this illustrious minority. Just as the Inuit have more than 30 words for snow, the Avalanches’ music revels in a thousand subtle shades of joy.

Dance music’s own version of “deep” is “dark.” “Dark” typically refers to genres in which bass frequencies dominate and treble’s been purged (along with melody, the human voice, and any general pleasantness). On Since I Left You, by contrast, you barely notice the bass lines (except when the groove from Madonna’s “Holiday” skips into the mix), while the pounding house beat is more rudimentary than even Daft Punk’s. Instead, the Avalanches’ sound is all about the high end: swirling strings, spangly harps, billowing flutes, twinkly trickles of electric piano, dulcet feminine harmonies. The densely layered cornucopia of dazzle (a thousand samples from hundreds of records) is the end product of 18 months spent combing Australian thrift stores for used vinyl. And on tracks like “Two Hearts in 3/4 Time” and “A Different Feeling,” the Avalanches’ tweeter overload is like a cross between Stereolab’s Francophile easy listening and Stardust’s French filter disco. Treble not only evokes light, it creates light-headedness." - Spin

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