Music / Australia
Review: The Avalanches, Motion
It’s hot outside: 30 degrees on the streets, a Mediterranean blaze of shimmering heat. It’s hot inside too as the summery psychedelic sounds of Australian samplers The Avalanches cut and paste over the sweaty interior of Motion.
Sixteen years after their groundbreakingly brilliant debut album Since I Left You washed its euphoric mixes over us, the band finally brought out the follow-up, Wildflower, last year. It’s more of the same, but it’s welcome – it had been a long time coming after all.
There have been fallouts and illness over the years. What we have currently are two of the three founders: bleached-blonde Robbie Chater, on guitar tonight, and Tony De Blasi on keyboards and decks. They are joined by drummer Paris Jefree and two vocalists who aren’t on the albums: Eliza Wolfgramm and rapper Spank Rock (real name Naeem Juwan).
is needed now More than ever
The sound quality tonight is distractingly fuzzy at times but not quite enough to deter from the best moments. Above this The Avalanches’ signature sound – hedonistically effective sampling allied to snatches of dance, disco, rock, pop and stringed soul – blasts through at best as it can.
They open with the sunny intro of fellow antipodeans Australian Crawl’s early-80s hit Reckless, mixing in classical piano and slowed-down vocals, which leaps into a solid groove. This is followed by the hip-hop of Because I’m Me and an effective combination of a version of The Clash’s Guns Of Brixton and their divisive single from their most recent album, the rag-timey shuffler Frankie Sinatra.
Flight Tonight from the first album sends the first really big ecstatic ripple through the throng, followed soon after by those introductory notes and neighs of Frontier Psychiatrist echoing down to us as blissfully as ever.
They end, of course, with Since I Left You. It’s an hour of old and new including the encore, but for all Chater’s guitar licks, inventiveness of De Blasi and energy of Wolfmann and Spank, it seems as if its over too soon and a prelude to something better. Sure they’re headed to Glastonbury and the massive ovation they are bound to get there this weekend, but it’s like being offered a choc-ice and then having it taken away when you were just savouring it. Or perhaps the heat’s made me crazy in the coconut…
Read more: Review: Thee Oh Sees, SWX
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