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. Different Feeling
10. Electricity
11. Tonight May Have to Last Me All My Life
12. Pablo's Cruise
13. Frontier Psychiatrist
14. Etoh
15. Summer Crane
16. Little Journey
17. Live at Dominoes
18. Extra Kings

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43429 in Music
• Released on: 2004-07-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Album Description
This re-release was praised by the likes of Rolling Stone, Spin, URB, Blender, and more as "...utterly beyond anything heard to date." Playful, twisted, psychedelic, sampledelic, delirious, and infectious, it's the sound of six men who spent most of adolescence rummaging through bargain bins in Melbourne's record shops, constructing their own post-modern disco-pop amalgam from rubbish 50's rejects and saccharine 60's pap. Also available domestically for the first time on 180 gram double vinyl.

Customer Reviews

Avalanche rock
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.

A real trip
I stumbled onto this ablum by just taking a punt while I was in a record shop, by asking the guy behind the counter to suggest an amazing CD to me.

I didn't give the CD a good listen at the shop and when I got it home I was a bit disappointed (it sounded all scrathcy like an old vinyl and that irritated me) and didn't play the album again for about 6 months.

Then one day I took out the album and played again and was stuned at how brilliant it is.

This ablum is a trip in the true sense of the word. You will be taken on a journey of musical genius (yes the word does get used over much but these guys really are musical geniuses) that not only enertains but it also transports.

This album fuctions a bit like a bunch of fragmented memories, jumping from place to place within a loose framework.

Dazzling and amazing stuff.

You'll really enjoy it, as long as you're not an elitist lame-o
It's a remarkably well balanced album. I think what the other guy(the one who couldn't recommend the album) inaccurately describes as filler is simply variations in depth. There are some deeper r&b moments, then shades of deep house, disco, and shades, and shades, and it just kind of goes on like that for the duration of the album.....And this group weaves genres together like kaleidescope making it all seem so workable. Great effort. Simply seamless. It takes some real talent to take great musical moments in history and them put them together in a way that does all justice.

Pop this on at a house party with a bunch of people. Those that want to dance can, those that want to chill will, and everyone will be comfortable and happy.