About

- A TAV Essential Listening Album -

The debut album from Australian electronic music duo The Avalanches remains an unparalleled, almost preternatural feat of sampling prowess. Released in 2000 on Modular, studio alchemists Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi elevated the practice sampledelia and plunderphonics into a dizzying artform with Since I Left You. Composed of over 3500 disparate samples from every genre and time period imaginable, this album is the densest and most propulsive example of the serotonin pleasures that crate-digging ingenuity and collage creativity can cultivate. From top to bottom, Since I Left You is an endless temporal wormhole of joy - warping the listener back and forth through imaginative chops, flips, and Frankenstein transmogrifications of hip-hop, disco, pop, soul and psychedelia. Best of all, The Avalanches accomplish this with a surgeon’s precision that somehow still feels like drunken spontaneity.  - The Analog Vault

Endless summers for many youths don't consist of beaches and surfboards. Instead, they're spent on blacktops and jungle gyms. More gritty and halfway between the curb and the hoop than anything celestial, the Avalanches remind you of a point in your life when you could blissfully hang upside down from monkey bars and just dangle. Like recklessly riding your BMX or skipping rope after downing a sugar-laced pitcher of lemonade, the un-mawkish Since I Left You thrives on making you feel youthful and mighty.

Its Utopian grove stand bric-a-brac of grooves, beats, flutters, whistles, oohs-and-yeahs, and sundry animal noises can alternately sound familiar and fresh. Some origins can be immediately placed, and those that can't trigger an impulse that you've heard it somewhere before. You're at least familiar with the tone as it relates to a long-lost feeling of childhood bliss -- whether it's staring at a clear blue sky from a fresh-cut lawn or the first time you heard "Rock the Bells." 

If you want stifling touchstones, they're there. Dunk the Beastie Boys of Paul's Boutique and Basement Jaxx into the fountain of youth; Sylvester meets Tweety; Mercury Rev links hands with the Bomb Squad for laps around the roller rink. It's no cloyed nostalgia trip, pieced together humbly by Aussies who are probably telling you the truth when they say they listen "to a little bit of everything." The unflinching mix offers plenty of tempo variety, knowing just when to change the pitch before hitting overkill. 

The second half features a subtle lull that builds up in time for "Live at Dominoes," possibly the strongest cut. There's little doubt to Since I Left You's status as one of the most intimate and emotional dance records that isn't vocal-based. It works on an almost mystical level. Don't be too surprised if a future dig through the wallet unearths a membership card to the Summer Break Funk Association. — (via AllMusic)

(Tracklist featured here on Spotify does not represent the official vinyl version)
—
Tracklist on vinyl:

A1    Since I Left You    
A2    Stay Another Season    
A3    Radio    
A4    Two Hearts In 3/4 Time    
B1    Avalanche Rock    
B2    Flight Tonight    
B3    Close To You    
B4    Diners Only    
B5    A Different Feeling    
C1    Electricity    
C2    Tonight May Have To Last Me All My Life    
C3    Pablo's Cruise    
C4    Frontier Psychiatrist    
D1    Etoh    
D2    Summer Crane    
D3    Little Journey    
D4    Live At Dominoes    
D5    Extra A Kings    

↓
Label: XL Recordings
Format: 2 × Vinyl, LP, Reissue, Gatefold
Reissued: 2016 / Original - 2000
Genre: Electronica
Style: Leftfield, Abstract

File under: Leftfield
⦿