The Avalanches: Wildflower

THE AVALANCHES: WILDFLOWER (2016)

1) The Leaves Were Falling; 2) Because I'm Me; 3) Frankie Sinatra; 4) Subways; 5) Going Home; 6) If I Was A Folkstar; 7) Colours; 8) Zap!; 9) The Noisy Eater; 10) Wildflower; 11) Harmony; 12) Live A Lifetime Love; 13) Park Music; 14) Livin' Underwater (Is Something Wild); 15) The Wozard Of Iz; 16) Over The Turnstiles; 17) Sun­shine; 18) Light Up; 19) Kaleidoscope Lovers; 20) Stepkids; 21) Saturday Night Inside Out; 22) Frankie Sinatra (extended mix).

Perhaps the weirdest thing about The Avalanches' second album and the 15 (!) years that separate it from the first one is realizing that The Avalanches did not, in fact, break up over any significant time period in the interim. They'd always been a fairly loose collective, and the only current members are the core duo of Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, while other people came and went, but there never really was a specific timeframe in between 2001 and 2016 when The Ava­lanches officially «did not exist» — so one cannot technically call Wildflower a «comeback», especially given the fact that some of its tracks had been conceived as early as 2000.

So — fifteen frickin' falls, a period over which most of the band's original adolescent fans gradu­ated from college, got themselves steady jobs, got married, settled down, grew some new or shaved off some old facial hair, only to wake up one fine morning and learn that there was also a parallel reality in which nothing has changed: Wildflower not only picks up from exactly where Since I Left You had, in fact, left us, but it goes on to walk a crooked mile in order to leave us, one hour later, at the exact same starting point once again. As if you needed one more argument to show how little has changed in the world of music since the 21st century introduced us to the concept of Artistic Deep Freeze, the Avalanches are here to teach us a lesson in how «it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place», to quote a truly immortal line.

To be fairly honest, if this reaction can be called «enjoyment», then I «enjoyed» Wildflower ab­so­lutely no less (and probably no more) than I did with Since I Left You — a reaction that could hardly be said to agree with the overall critical and fan response to the record, where most people said that it was sort of okay but no Since I Left You. The reason for that seems to be on the sur­face: Since I Left You struck a chord with its novelty factor — few, if any, people up to that point made plunderphonics sound so fun, so light, so danceable, so accessible, and yet so absolute in terms of focus and dedication. There was a certain inspirational whiff to it that may even have led some people to entertain odd thoughts about how this would be the future of music, etc. But now that fifteen years have passed and, while sampling as such remains firmly embedded in our conscience as one of the most heavily (ab)used modern musical means, plunderphonics remains on the fringes of that conscience — and it kind of looks like it was a dead end after all. A fun dead end to find oneself in every once in a while, but hardly one where you can give a slight tap to the magical wall at the end and find yourself in musical nirvana.

But perhaps this assessment — «nice, but nothing particularly new or mind-blowing» — is un­fair, and all it takes is a few attentive listens to uncover progress? Well, they do seem to be a little more open to integrating some new sounds in the patchy canopy of old: for instance, rappers Danny Brown and Biz Markie came along for some of the sessions to record vocal parts for several tracks, along with a few other less familiar faces. Indeed, Wildflower goes much heavier on the raps than its predecessor, though it hardly ever feels like a hip-hop record because its «plunderbase» is so much more antiquated than is typical of sampling in hip-hop. That's pretty much the only substantial difference — other than that, Wildflower offers you still the same dizzying kaleidoscope of instrumental and vocal overdubs that find their sources in little-known old vinyl grooves. You will get educated, for sure, as they revitalize long-forgotten niceties: ʽBecause I'm Meʼ, for instance, is all based on loops from ʽWant Adsʼ by The Honey Cones, a cool dance-soul number from the sunniest corner of 1969 (sold a million copies back in the day, by the way, but who remembers that now? Well — The Avalanches do!), while ʽFrankie Sinatraʼ exploits Wilmoth Houdini's ʽBobby Sox Idolʼ and reminds you of how ironically fun classic calypso music could be back in the day, with Danny Brown supplementing Houdini's trembling croak with his own humorous take on the Frank Sinatra thing ("Like Frank Sinatra, bitch, do this shit my way" — welcome to 2016, ladies and gentlemen).

On the really obscure side, ʽSubwaysʼ will teach you about the 1980 EP by "Chandra", a pre-teen artist who might be regarded as sort of Eighties' equivalent to Rebecca Black (no, really, I mean it: the original ʽSub­waysʼ is such an embarrassing piece of pseudo-New-Wave/disco-mash-up that it is almost ama­zing how The Avalanches managed to take out a couple lines and make them sound alarming and troubled); and on the «null void» side, ʽThe Noisy Eaterʼ features a hilarious live recording of ʽCome Togetherʼ as performed by the choir of Kew High School in the band's own native Melbourne, mashed with a Biz Markie narrative about a «noisy eater», with language stuck midway between British folklore and gangsta rap. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Well, I can tell you that the surrealist absurdity of it all does come through, and I'd be lying through my teeth if I said this wasn't at all entertaining. Plus, there's always the game challenge — how many of these bits and pieces will you recognize on your own? I totally suck at this, but I was at least proud of my Beatle-lore when my ears perceived a snippet from the carnivalesque Lowrey organ of ʽBe­ing For The Benefit Of Mr. Kiteʼ on ʽFrankie Sinatraʼ, or the vocal harmony bit from Ram's ʽUncle Albertʼ on ʽLiving Underwaterʼ (alas, Spirit's ʽWater Womanʼ that constitutes the backbone of the track was stuffed way too deep in my memory to resurface on its own).

So yes, it's all fun. They have a good ear for «tasty bits», and if there's a lesson in here that even bad-to-mediocre obscurities can have moments of impressive musical dynamics that might very well work outside of the original context — count me in. The problem is, it still does not work anywhere other than in its own post-modern frame, and aren't we living in a post-post-modern frame already? (Or perhaps even «post-post-post-modern», I've honestly lost count...). Fifteen years have not taught these guys how to plunder their phonics in a way that would truly create an alternate psychedelic reality to which I could, you know, relate or something. There's a lot of fussiness here, for sure, and meta-melodicity, and even some atmospheric warmth, considering how they usually concentrate on life-asserting dance-oriented R&B and sunshine pop for their sources, yet none of this makes the resulting collage properly meaningful on an emotional level, once you've savored the joke.

To be honest, I cannot blame them for not having made much pro­gress because I fail to see how it is even possible to make any progress in this direction — al­though, on the other hand, maybe if they had introduced some jarring mood shifts (for instance, added a «dark side» to the bubbly psychedelic frolicking by plundering, oh, I dunno, some death metal archives?), this could help focus our attention? Whatever. In any case, I'd be very surprised if somebody (Danny Brown fans excepted) honestly and flatly preferred Wildflower to Since I Left You — ultimately, it just feels like a bonus hour for those who thought that 2001's Australia summarized the highest points of Western civilization as we knew them. For everybody else, it's mostly a good way to remem­ber Wilmoth Houdini — and Chandra.

The Avalanches: Since I Left You

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