Track Listing

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. Ethoh
15. Summer Crain
16. Little Journey
17. Live At Dominoes
18. Extra Kings

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2071 in Music
• Released on: 2001-04-16
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Avalanches are a much-feted six-man crew of sample-addicts from down-under, whose debut album Since I Left You is a bargain-bin vinyl throwback to the Daisy Age. Their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach is exemplified by their debut single, "Since I Left You", which opens the record with its wistful disco-samba shuffle and a scintillating sliced-and-diced soul vocal. The album is constructed like a mix tape and calculated to tweak the dance floor. Snatches of familiar rhythms bubble up throughout, giving the record a comfortable lived-in feel, but also betraying the fact that the group haven't dug very far through the crates to source their raw material. Vast chunks of records by Madonna, Art of Noise, Kid Creole And The Coconuts and Parisian hip-hoppers Saian Supa Crew are easily identifiable. There's little doubt that this kind of sample re-construction has become standard fare for retrogressive adolescents with a mania for collecting records and precious little musical flair. The Avalanches get full marks for their seamless mixing skills, but otherwise it all feels way too neat and tidy, bristling with its own inventiveness when it should strive for something that transcends its influences. For every innovator like DJ Shadow and Dan the Automator, there will be an avalanche of imitators. --Chris Campion

CD Description
The creation of dark and spectral soundscapes seems almost de rigueur for electronica artists. Not so for the Avalanches, a six-member DJ ensemble from Australia. In fact, the group's debut, SINCE I LEFT YOU, was the most feel-good slab ofsample-centered electronica to come down the pike in ages. Though tied to house, trance, and other styles of the postmodern DJ tradition, this album presents a sense of openness, naivete, and promise. Familiar dance samples, childlike voices, choral refrains, funky breaks, and a gentle, oddly soothing avant-garde clutter are dominant here. In no way is the record simple-minded, however. The Avalanches construct dense sonic tapestries; between the simultaneous beats, multiplesamples, vocal clips, and flourishes of live instrumentation, it is difficult to discern where the band's meticulous architecture leaves off and the sparkling aural dream begins. In an age where "everything's been done," and the most interesting artistic forms stem from recombining pre-existing snippets of culture, the appearance of an album that makes something bright and hopeful from that same aesthetic is both startling and welcome.

Customer Reviews

don't believe the unbelievers.
it seems that some listeners can't quite comprehend the concept behind the avalanches' thrilling debut album, since i left you.

upon hearing a sample that (shock! horror!) they might have heard before, they immediately label the band lazy, for 'not digging deep enough' into the crates, or even more laughably, unoriginal, simply because sampling is used at all.

i dare them to listen to the 'gimix' bootleg tape that was circulating long before the album was ever released: not only does it contain the 'obvious' samples used in the album itself, but bob dylan, cyndi lauper, jimi hendrix, de la soul, the beatles, the smiths, deee-lite and a whole host of unbelievably big names make appearances... huge chunks of their biggest hit singles are audaciously and very deliberately included.

the point is, these songs, and the samples in 'since i left you' are not chosen in order to steal the original artists' thunder. on the contrary, the avalanches are paying homage to music that they love and revere. of course, in the end, it's not what they use, it's how they use it. be prepared to be blown away as jimi hendrix's 'crosstown traffic' is mixed with cyndi lauper's 'girls just wanna have fun' as though it were the most natural thing in the world. stand, mouth agape, as sgt. peppers, sped up, is played hand in hand with 'groove is in the heart', and jurassic 5's 'jayou'.

similarly, the well known (and some might say, tired old) tunes sampled on the album itself are treated in a fresh, refreshing, magical and totally inspired way. many are unrecognisable. for every well known pop tune sampled, ten equally obscure ones also appear - the instant-recognition tunes don't take precedence over the unknowns - all are included with the same reverence, and all flow beautifully together to create a unified, deeply soulful, infinitely detailed and textured whole. the avalanches aren't trying to trick us into thinking they played all the instruments on the album and wrote it from scratch. that's not what 'since i left you' is about at all. they are not divorcing the sampled sounds from their original context. using snippets from well known songs is not lazy - it's very brave, in this climate of zero-tolerance litigation.

why would madonna let her music be sampled for the very first time if the avalanches were simply going to use it in a derivative, vacuous, 'p-diddy' style? in fact, the 'holiday' sample serves almost as an atmospheric backdrop, just like the sampled seabird calls and cheers - it's as though there's a party happening somewhere on the 'since i left you' cruise liner, and you're invited.

accusations of 'bad mixing' and 'sounds terrible' are equally hollow. this album is mixed beautifully - not saccharinely and blandly, but piquantly, with just the right dissonant kick. it sounds terrific. if you haven't already, buy it.

Since I left you
The Avalanches are a DJ's dream come true -- six Aussies who took hundreds of sound snatches, and wove together a wildly playful kind of electronica. Their first (and so far, only) album, "Since I Left You," is a tangle of the delicate, the weird, and the incredibly danceable.

It kicks off with the sparkling "Since I Left You," but the best is yet to come. The Avalanches manage to attain both a typical "sound" and plenty of originality in their songs, such as the bleeps-and-horns "Different Feeling," the knob-twiddling basslines of "Radio," the sputtery dance number "Live At Dominoes," and the interference-laden Rastafarian rock "Flight Tonight."

But with all the dance tracks, the Avalanches have their softer side: the delicately upbeat "Two Hearts in 3/4 Time," the swaying "Electricity," the brief and staticky "Pablo's Cruise," and the gauzy, multilayered "Etoh." It rounds off with the majestically languid "Extra Kings," which has a long sweep of distortion and chaos in the middle.

It's almost too easy to dance to the Avalanches. They take almost a thousand mismatched sounds and manage to cobble them into some really brilliant music. What's especially brilliant is the way these patchwork dance tracks manage to find solid, simple grooves, and stick to them right to the end.

"Since I Left You" isn't perfect -- at times the fragments don't quite mesh together. Some parts are pure chaos, but oddly they don't mar the overall sound; instead, they enhance it. Scattered in amongst the melody is the sound of video games, horses, discos, golf instructions, flutes, pianos, and seagulls -- it adds a strangely whimsical sound to the dance music.

The vocals tend to be samples repeated over and over, just under the surface of the music. Among the vocal snatches are the ethereal "Since I left you/I found the world so new!" or determined "Book of flight tonight." So the lyrics are often quite simple, except for the hysterically funny "Frontier Psychiatrist" ("Lie down on the couch, what does that mean?/You're a nut! You're crazy in the coconut!").

"Since I Left You" takes hundreds of random sound fragments, and turns them into a mosaic. Fun, playful, fast and hypnotically bizarre, this is a must have for fans of quirky music.

Smooth and mesmerisingly flowing album
As a whole, "Since I Left You" is considerably more than just the sum of its parts. The album flows so well - it is almost as if track marks and names were included in order to conform as it would surely be sacrilege to not play this album from start to finish. All the samples are cleverly used to create a fantastic trifle of sound - only you may need a quality hifi to properly appreciate all the layers. I heartily recommend this album.