THE AVALANCHES: SINCE I LEFT YOU (2001)
1) Since I Left You; 2) Stay
Another Season; 3) Radio; 4) Two Hearts In 3/4 Time; 5) Avalanche Rock; 6)
Flight Tonight; 7) Close To You; 8) Diners Only; 9) A Different Feeling; 10)
Electricity; 11) Tonight; 12) Pablo's Cruise; 13) Frontier Psychiatrist; 14)
Etoh; 15) Summer Crane; 16) Little Journey; 17) Live At Dominoes; 18) Extra
Kings.
It is not difficult to understand the concept
of «plunderphonics»: all you have to do is to agree that, in art at least, the
total does not always equal the sum of its parts. If you take sample A from one
artist and sample B from another artist and put them together, you are not
performing a crude act of «stealing» as long as you acknowledge the sources —
you may be trying to generate a new meaning. As in — sample one of Hitler's
speeches over ʽStar Spangled Bannerʼ and you will definitely be generating a new meaning, albeit one that might
cause you some headache if thrown about in the public sphere.
It is much more troublesome, though, to understand
if the very art of «plunderphonics» has, in itself, anything to do with
«music». The Avalanches themselves, a merry bunch of Australian DJs with a
heavy interest in old used vinyl, would, and have, understandably argued that
it does. After all, Since I Left You
— their debut, and, so far, their only
record — is not merely something that has to be perceived through one's ears,
it is also something that is targeted at provoking a rhythmic reaction from
your body: stuff that you should, and could, dance to, and it is fairly hard to
dance to anything other than music. Even architecture.
On the other side, it can hardly be argued that
Since I Left You is «just» a
dance-oriented pop album. Its composition — a super-complex kaleidoscope of
over 900 different samples — all by itself positions it as a work of art, to be
processed and analyzed through your mind just as well as it could be picked up
by the irrational nerve centers in your body. And this is where one begins to
have problems with viewing it as «music»: from this point of view, Since I Left You becomes an analogy of something
like a Duchamp readymade.
The hour-long album, all of it structured like
one long track, without a single break between the separate tracks, seamlessly
flowing in and out of each other, is mostly rooted in the groovy sounds of generic
1970s R&B — so generic, in fact, that I confess to not recognizing any of the samples involved (supposedly,
there has to be a bit of Madonna's ʽHolidayʼ in here somewhere, but I don't
remember where exactly). Part of the band's preference for these obscure funk /
disco grooves probably stems from the understandable fear of getting sued by
the big gangstas of pop entertainment (they'd rather be sued by the small
ones), but part of it is symbolic — as some sort of adepts of the Andy Warhol
school of pop-art, they find their interest in dragging out long-forgotten
chunks of routine mediocrity and going the "it ain't art because it's
inherently fabulous, it's art because we
are inherently fabulous and we say
it's art" route with them.
On the outside layer, having chopped up,
remixed, and loop-de-looped those R&B grooves, they mix them with miriads
of sound effects, everything from neighing horses to movie soundtracks to phaser
blasts from crappy (or not so crappy) 1980s video games, and offer it for our
attention and appreciation. The overall effect, if there is an overall effect, could only be described as «The Mad Hatter's
Disco Ball» — an experimental, sprawling panorama of sonic absurdity,
completely open to analysis, interpretation, admiration, derision, or the
occasional flight of a rotten tomato. Unfortunately, there is nothing
«revolutionary» in this approach per se — «plunderphonics» as a concept dates
back to at least John Oswald's invention of the term in 1985, or, to a smaller
extent, to the works of The Art Of Noise in the early 1980s. So one can only
evaluate the merits of The Avalanches based on a question like «so, what exactly
are they doing here to convince us that the art of plunderphonics deserves
further existence?»
My brief personal answer to this would then be
something like «uhhh...». A longer answer would involve mumbling out phrases
like «well, I guess they can sound funny at times», «you know, it doesn't really sound all the same if you really
put your ear to it», and «hey, sometimes it is more productive to ask questions
than to give answers».
In all honesty, I do not «get» this album, and
have no reason to think that anyone does (at least, certainly not based on the
actual glowing reviews of it that I have read). I do remember myself, in early
childhood, playing two tapes on different tape recorders and recording the
results on a third one, just for pointless fun — the results could sometimes be
unpredictably hilarious. I have very
strong suspicions that this here is simply a case of several overgrown kids who
somehow remained stuck in the same mood, only with access to far superior
technologies and far larger data banks. Consequently, the results are essentially
the same: sometimes, through sheer chance, it works, sometimes it doesn't, but
what works and what doesn't work will most likely be completely different and
unpredictable for different people.
On one thing there may be no disagreement: a
heavy shitload of work went into the creation of this whole project — several
years of toil and trouble, in fact (and the real curious thing about The
Avalanches is that, while they are still alive and kicking, they have by now
spent more than a decade planning and
recording their follow-up record). Serious plunderphonics requires serious
skills at plundering — which may be one reason behind all the positive reviews:
even if these overdubs make little sense, they are all fitted together quite
smoothly, so that the album never ever becomes truly cacophonous. Crazy, but
not dissonant or chaotic. The horses are neighing in all the right spots —
where somebody else would have probably inserted a repetitive lead guitar lick
or synth loop. Even the video game phaser blasts on ʽA Different Feelingʼ are
all blasting out on time and in perfect harmony with the disco beats.
In other words, I am quite ready to agree that Since I Left You is a triumph of form —
and an awesome soundtrack for a party that has to combine opportunities for
dancing, hip intellectualism, and an atmosphere of whacked out surrealism. But
on the other hand, I do not wish for a second to overestimate this stuff — for
instance, by trying to over-analyze and «interpret» any of these tracks (and,
given the complexity of their structure, treating even one of them in this manner
could take a long time and make the
writer look seriously afflicted). You
have your own perfect right, for instance, to regard the record as a symbolic
expression of pop culture's diversity, or as a symbolic expression of pop
culture's vanity and cheapness, or as a symbolic expression of pop culture's
trashy beauty and seductiveness, or as a brave statement saying that nothing
that goes into the wastebasket is guaranteed to forever stay in the
wastebasket...
...whatever. It's all puzzling, curious, and
intriguing, but there is also something disturbing in the fact that Since I Left You so often ends up on
people's lists of «best-of-the-decade» albums — a rather desperate, if not
depressing, decision, I'd say.
Check "Since I Left You" (CD) on Amazon
Hipsters don't lie. They just trim their moustaches.
ReplyDeleteGreat review, as always, but if you can go back to "A" while you're still working through "B", I have to wonder why you haven't moved on to "C" yet. Come on, let's see some Can on this blog!
ReplyDeleteGoing back is always easier than going forward. Besides, it is necessary to keep a good alphabetic balance between all seven sections.
DeleteLovely album. I hate to sound cheesy, but Since I Left You does feel like a sort of musical journey. The sound is both smooth and intricate, I love that. I'd say that if you want to get away from it all for an hour or so, this is about perfect. The title track and "Frontier Phyciatrist" are the highlights, but individual songs are your least concern here.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't be on my list of decade's best, but I love pulling this one out once every three months or so.
Also, I heard about a follow-up several years ago - I guess there could be some competition with Wrens there.
Sounding like a "musical journey" isn't cheesy at all if it's in the stated record that the album began envisioned with a globe-trotting story about a boy chasing after a girl (ah, love) but eventually got backgrounded to make way for the sampling antics, like that Madonna bassline that crops up right after Track 2 (Stay Another Season) is born out of the opening title track.
DeleteThere's a deep ideological rift over the effort and value of creating something from pre-existing parts. The Duchamp analogy would maybe be more akin to a less deft example of sampling, like, er, MC Hammer doing his thing over "Superfreak" by Rick James. And even in the laziest cases, sampling (done right) has always been acknowledging the value of the constituent parts and transporting that into the newly-made context. Ask anyone who makes music this way and they'll tell you straight off the bat the debt owed to the source material. And I don't just mean the licensing payments.
I don't want to be pithy, but I wish George would "listen again" and try to pick out some of the subtleties. The recurring samples, reappearing themes, the lingering thematic elements that can all be teased out, that stuff. It's a bit like a Magic Eye poster; you have to line the similar bits up, but ultimately let it blur together and fixate on the whole, as a completed composition, or you'll only see the squiggles and stripes instead of the hidden image that jumps out at you. In any case, watch the music video for "Frontier Psychiatrist" at least once if you haven't. (Applicable to anyone.)
P.S. the old archives seem to be MIA... is this a temporary downtime or are the ancient tomes lost for good?
"That boy needs therapy." It's an interesting album but it's hard to get any real emotional pull from any of it.
ReplyDelete