The Avalanches are a six-piece Australian outfit made up of multi-instrumentalists and championship DJs, who've been the name to drop (yawn) in dance circles after their remixes for Badly Drawn Boy and Manic Street Preachers. This debut album has gone gold since its original release in Australia well over a year ago, and if it does the same over here, then it would be a very good thing indeed.
Taking two years to complete and built around a staggering 900 samples from the forgotten, vaguely uncool realms of pop's history such as The Osmonds, Boney M, Kid Creole and Bert Kaempfert along with fragments of De La Soul, Madonna, Jimmy Webb and the Isley Brothers, 'Since I Left You' is nothing short of stunning.
A travelogue of grooves that voyages around the realms of boogie with a cheery innocence, should summer eventually decide to turn up, then this would be the perfect accompaniment. There's more imagination in this hour-long odyssey than most sample-based artists manage in their entire career. Not since DJ Shadow's 'Endtroducing' has an album showed what you really can do with a bunch of old vinyl.
You probably know the title track by now: a shuffle of warm strings, fluttering flutes and party noises, with a chorus based around a clip of 70s teen-soul outfit The Main Attraction, from then on, the familiar bass line of 'Madge's Holiday' slips in to underpin 'Stay Another Season', and is reprised later on the frenzied 'Little Journey', which gives way to the 'Ma Baker'-tastic 'Live At Dominoes'.
For a large part, this is car-boot soul without irksome comedy noises -although the western-themed 'Frontier Psychiatrist' grates after a while - this is more a pop-art collage of disco wonder that can't help but make you smile.
Lord knows how, and when, they'll follow it, but for now, 'Since I Left You' is a complete joy, a true spirit-lifter and quite possibly - steady now - album of the year.
by Ian Wade