The Avalanches have been exclusively inventive. The album is almost the antithesis of their initial artistic pitch.

First it was: turn disparate samples into coherent music.

Here it's: take music that coheres and turn it into a fragmented experience.

I felt very unsure how I would feel about it after my first listen because it was so irreverent and different. I am already absolutely in love with it after about three listens. What I know for sure is that it's one of my most unique listening experiences in recent memory. I think it'll be very interesting to see what we all have to say about this album a few years from now.

INCREDIBLE!!!

I forgot to put the feat in the title: (feat. Vegyn)

Obviously we can only guess/speculate for now as no one really knows for certain, but I’m just curious as to what they will play. the other night when they played in Japan, they just played the whole album front to back and nothing else (according to setlist.fm). if they did the same in NYC, I would not mind at all!! I am absolutely loving the new album!! :)

First of all I love the album. Why do you think it wasn't used? It could have been a perfect intro or closing track I think.

Haven’t seen anybody post about this one yet, Bakemono is an all time fav of mine, such a cool random little sample that made me replay 50 times to make sure I wasn’t crazy lmao

When I first heard the singles I was a little apprehensive - thought they were okay but a little too “kids choiry/chipmunky” for my taste lol, thought they’d fit better in the context of the full album, but was thinking it might be my least favorite of their 4 albums.

Listened to it last night and was pretty blown away. It can be a challenging listen, but it’s pretty fun/brilliant/joyful, and I personally think it’s more cohesive than WF/WWALY, which are great too, but feel more like collections of songs/singles, with looser ongoing themes running throughout. No Bad Memories feels more like the glitchy/soul/vaporwave spiritual successor to SILY, putting a bunch of childhood memories in a blender and making a party record out of it.

Spotted a childhood Osment advert for Pizza Hut, to go with modern day fake advert for "El Dorado TV Spot" track

cool how they sampled one of the samples from SILY!

I was lucky enough to be able to stop by The Electric Fetus, a record store here in downtown Minneapolis today who were one of just a handful stores who partnered with The Avalanches to give out some free goodies for the release.

Everyone who bought the Album got both a pack of 5 postcards and a small poster of the cover art. They also raffled off a signed test pressing of the new album but I didn't win lol.

That is the most fun I've ever had listening to a record for the first time. Some of the things they do musically and with the samples is just so fun.

My personal favorites so far are definitely Every Single Weekend (I love Jamie XX) and Our Love is Alive.

It is such an eclectic album, I feel like there is a little bit for everyone in it. There are samples and moments that feel exactly like early Avalanches like SILY and GIMIX (Highfield), there are elements that feel just like Wildflower (Under Yr Power), some just like WWALY (especially Blue Shadows, Cant Get Over Losing You), and some brand new stuff (Vida, Total Recall).

Just awesome.

Can we but hope and dream it will have the original samples ... for $95 (in dollarydoos).

I don't need it but others might.

I got 10.

Lætitia Sadier
Dan Deacon
Loukeman
Gerry Read
Fcukers
Magdalena Bay
Pearl & The Oysters
Jon Hopkins
Jarvis Cocker
Melody’s Echo Chamber

That ‘aha’ sample at 1:46 in this track sounds awfully familiar…

Im really curious to learn how many different bird samples are actually hidden throughout the album.

Theres certainly a lot of overt ones that even someone totally bird illiterate like me can hear but im left with a lot of sounds that feel like they could be a bird (like the repeating trill they added to the Shadows From Nowhere vocal/beat in Blue Shadows) and then stuff that im 90% certain is a bird like the end of 3d Glasses Not Included.

No Bad Memories is very good!

Saying that means a lot to someone who wasn't super keen on We Will Always Love You. I thought that record had a handful of very strong moments, but overall I found it slow, morose, and "homogenous" in a style that I found a departure from what I liked about the Avalanches. Not that they aren't allowed to experiment, nor that they can't try something more ambient or sad, the way they did it just wasn't for me. I don't want to cause any trouble saying that, I'm just speaking as someone who thinks Since I Left You is the best album ever made (and Wildflower a not-far-off contender).

Meanwhile, this album is the opposite of my thoughts on WWALY: it's fast, frantic, chaotic, silly, colorful fun, with occasional dips into the wistful and melancholy. Even while sharing WWALY's modern and sleek production style, those elements felt like they're reigniting the spirit I fell in love with.

The production is interesting in how it calls back to that, too. While SILY/WF's samples are densely packed and placed in a way that you endlessly explore, this is like if you splayed that same DNA out directly in front of you, pulling it as thinly as it can stretch. You then experience everything in linear order, hurdling at lightning speed as it crashes from one proverbial memory bank to the next. Not AS amazing in idea or execution as the first two albums, mind, but a very admirable twist on the formula. And I can't blame them for taking a route like this if it means an album doesn't take 10-15 years to make, lol.

I do hope they someday try one more ultra-sampledelic masterpiece, but if the future of this group looks like experiments more in this vein, I'm interested. Consider my faith rejuvenated.

I do have my critiques though. Which are:

1. The songs are extremely short. Which can be both a positive and a negative, but it sometimes leaves me wanting more. Maybe that'll be a benefit for how "superfun" this record's replay value is, just jumping in and popping a few fast tracks and hopping out whenever you want, but I do wish at least half of the better tracks were at least a minute longer. There's 31-ish tracks and it doesn't even break an hour!
2. The album's concept / themes aren't very clear if you don't have the visual components or knowledge about the metanarrative walking in. I knew it all, sure, but I imagine someone who didn't will probably be a bit confused. There's one or two tracks that try to piece it together, but that leads to the next part...
3. BIG grievance: For some reason Evergreen Altar is physical exclusive, and Total Recall (as well as He Lives In the Old World & El Dorado TV Spot) are digital exclusive. The former is one of the best songs on the record, and the latter tracks are some of the most thematically important (which harms the already flimsy concept!). So I find it really frustrating that there is no version of the record with every track included. I had to makeshift my own, and even that required some Audacity surgery to make sure it doesn't have any redundant parts, since they'd cut tracks but keep some of their transitions. Eugh.
4. I'm not a huge fan of the "Final Credits" theme. Not that it isn't good, I love the Avvies putting some heat on a soul flip just like anyone else. But it is a little bit basic compared to the other version of I Give Everything I Have 2 U. It also gets between Total Recall and The Pavements Light, which I think together make a really resonant ending. Should have been after Pavements Light instead of before imo, like a proper bonus track I can choose to listen to on my own time. Idk.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10. Maybe an 8/10 if time makes me fonder for it.

Fav tracks: All The Time In the World, Evergreen Altar, Vida, I Give Everything I Have 2 U, The Pavements Light

These groups are taking the torch in a wonderful way. Amazing 60's/70sesque vocals. With some great old school instrumentation and some good vibes. It's a little simpler, but damn is it effective.

Volcano the album in particular- just, magic. All of Jungle's stuff. The album by Loaded Honey too.

I was reading this interview (https://web.archive.org/web/20160710040237/http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/the-avalanches-interview-robbie-chater-2016-wildflower/864236) where Robbie says about a song they cut from Wildflower, that

"It was a stylistic issue. It’s a beautiful song, one of my favourites. But it always put the album off on the wrong foot. It didn’t fit with everything else, so we had to let it go." and that it was "very ‘Since I Left You’-esque and opened up the album."

along with some other remarks about how they want to put out their unreleased stuff in some capacity. Does anybody know what this song is, and if so does it actually exist and where can I find it?

Just thought I would share the vibes. Anyone else listening on a device from yesteryear?

There is no need to be ranking every song just sit back and enjoy😉

I love the new album, but one of the things that’s really stuck with me is the final track. The Skylark sample isn’t really like anything else on the album, a song from the 1940s in an album heavily inspired by memories of technology from the 1980s and 1990s.

I can’t help but view this from the perspective that the Skylark sample was as old in the 1980s as that sort of technology is today, reflecting on how nostalgia can narrow a person‘s sense of time. I’m curious about other people’s takes on this?