This is the critically acclaimed debut album from the electronic, plunderphonics group from Melbourne, Australia, The Avalanches. The Avalanches started life as a noise punk band called Alarm 115 in 1994 and in 1995, they bought the usual things you need to start a rock band: instruments and recording gear. But they also bought something that would become very important to their identity later on: old records…and lots of them. Unfortunately, Manabu Etoh, their drummer, got deported, so Alarm 115 disbanded and the rest of the gang had to regroup, shifting their new identity to the old records they bought. In 1997, after touring under very vulgar names, they eventually settled on The Avalanches. So, what music did they make with the records? It’s called plunderphonics and that could not have a more apt name for a genre of music. Plunderphonics is a genre that takes(or plunders, if you will) copyrighted music and other audio material to make something completely new. Now you might hear this and think one of two things: First, “Hey, isn’t that illegal? I wonder how every performance rights organization on the planet from BMI to SOCAN to UBC to GEMA to JASRAC feels about this.” I imagine not good. This is because if you want to use ONE copyrighted song in your song, movie, commercial, or anything with audio, you will need sample clearance coming from both a synch license, and a master’s use license if you want to use the original, which can get pretty costly. Now, imagine anywhere from 900 to 3500 copyrighted songs all used at once in a 60-minute album span, with not a peep of original recording to create new music and imagine how ANGRY that would make the original songwriters and their teams. Naturally, making these songs is illegal, and yet, they still stay up for reasons that might be fair use or simply the fact that suing these guys is hopeless because they’re making something completely new, but I’m no music lawyer so, I might have to talk with one for more information. And the second thought you might be thinking is, “Using entirely sampled music to make a new song? That kind of sounds like vaporwave” and you would be right. In fact, vaporwave is considered a subgenre of plunderphonics. And after hearing this album, I gotta say that plunderphonics is way more ambitious than vaporwave. Why use one song to make new music when you can use at least six?! But back to this album. Since I Left You is the most successful and famous album in plunderphonics as it got a lot of critical acclaim upon release and even made a few weekly charts not just in their native Australia, but in France, Norway, Sweden, the UK and even the US (magic of the internet, amirite). Now as for how this album jumped into my lap, some guy named Shaan (my friend) told me to take a look at this album so we can talk about it later. I liked it, generally. I was bored at points, but I liked it. It manages to be cohesive even with all the samples it uses from different eras of music. I kind of need to change my review process because all the albums I have ever talked about have some element of live recording: drums, guitars, singing, rapping, etc. But this album is unique in the Christened Music pantheon because it entirely uses samples. As it goes in plunderphonics, composition is everything, as it’s all about what samples you use where, and with this album they use them pretty effectively. There may be a few boring tracks here and there, but this album shines in building atmosphere with its sound. Since I Left You is an album about vibes and places that you need to interpret for yourself and enjoy. It is a slightly challenging listen, but it can get pretty rewarding if you are patient with it.
PRODUCTION
I can’t really say much about the recording process of this album because I’m not sure such a thing even existed. How can you talk and critique the recording process of an album that didn’t really have a traditional process outside of recording samples and putting them together? This album is a collage of many different songs as mentioned, and because of that, it has a lot of different production styles and recording qualities all at once from a lot of different eras and genres. What do you do? Well, the title track I guess has the vocals buried in the mix just a teensy bit, but beyond that it sounds fine. It has a nice deep sound that almost always sounds good, but I don’t know how much of that is the Avalanches or the samples they put together.
I will say that the stereo sound is good. It really makes this album sound vibrant early, and it never lets up with that vibrancy, which is exactly what you want for an album like this with so many different samples making for a very lively little collection of songs. Right away we have a beach party on the title track, Since I Left You and it feels like you’re on a beach thanks to the use of stereo sound. Not to mention, it makes the rest of this album really interesting like the “Money” on Two Hearts in ¾ Time to start off the track. It’s not everywhere, but when it’s done well, it makes this record really pop and that’s all you can ask for. I just wish it was used a little more to make this album really stand out to me. It’s used more for layering than a “hey, look at me” style with a bunch of things flying around your ears, although it does dabble in that. As for all the effects, again, I don’t really know what effects The Avalanches used because I don’t quite know where the original sampled song ends and the Avalanches’ own changes and creativity begin, but I like the product. I feel like I’m not doing enough adequate research on this album because I can’t pour through thousands of songs in a week or so and do a good job of understanding the line deciding what from a sample and what is not from a sample. Ironically, this is a very production heavy album, but in a different sense from what I’m used to. A more compositional sense…
COMPOSITION
There are liner notes that say that there are live instruments playing, but for the life of me, I don’t really know which are real live instruments or samples. I just assumed that it was all samples, and I feel like that’s the general consensus from the research I did on this album. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the fact that this album is almost exclusively samples, in fact I find it really fascinating how they made completely new music from pre-existing music the likes of which I have never really seen before in my musical trails. But this is the first plunderphonics album of its kind that I’ve ever listened to and wow, it’s a completely different world than what I know. But I’m beating around the bush a little bit. As this album is primarily samples, let’s talk about them. This album uses thousands of them to make really lush songs with a lot going on It has usually clear drums, muted yet still audible bass and fun synths and other electronics. It’s really a massive feat to put all those samples together in the way that they were able to. However, there is a bit of a caveat to that, it can get a little haughty about what it can do at points. Fans of The Avalanches may hate me for saying this, but Frontier Psychiatrist doesn’t do it for me. When they made the parrot lady go errererererer, I felt that. But for real, it seems clunky, and that last leg is probably the worst idea here. It’s moments like these that make me respect this album more than I like it, but I already like it a fair bit. This is an album that leans heavily on its composition and it more or less works really well.
The structure is one of the strong points for me. Song structure is pretty fun, with really cool drops and buildups leading up to them. The drops on this thing hit you again and again with explosive, precise energy such as on A Different Feeling hitting us with that explosion with robotic precision. Album structure is perhaps my favourite part of this whole record. Each song bleeds into one another and it feels like it’s a couple long songs stretched out over multiple tracks. It does wonders for making this album a cohesive unit, but I feel like it has the same flaw that Pink Floyd albums do: you can’t shuffle this in your playlists, as it likely wasn’t made to be shuffled. But what’s worse, when each song bleeds into each other, you don’t get songs that are their own contained unit and you often need to hear the beginning of the next song to hear the end of a song. I also felt a little bored with hearing the same ideas and same tempos pop up over and over and I wondered to myself on occasion, “when will things start to switch up?” Although, that said, it feels like a club mix, and I’m pretty sure that was what they were going for: a response and even a celebration to dance music, not just from the prior decade, but throughout the genre’s history. Just sit back and have fun.
LYRICS
Lyrics are…uh…there…I guess. Ok, that’s not entirely fair to say, but I feel like this album is far more focussed on compositional than lyrical prowess. According to an interview, the original plan for this album was for it to be a concept album where someone goes around the world. Like the rest of the album’s elements, there are singers from multiple samples, so talking about just one as if there was one lead singer is kind of futile, so let’s talk about all of them. I find the vocal samples on Electricity to be really pretty and the ones on ETOH to be really jarring to just keep me engaged. Rap is a generally more percussive vocal style than singing is and this is no exception here, see the Prince Paul line, “and I need to book a flight tonight, ah” on Flight Tonight, for example. It’s used as a percussive thing on top of being a melody, but in a repetitive way that adds to the groove of that song. However, the Frontier Psychatrist thing is a little much for me. Just blatantly using samples to make phrases, even if they don’t exactly mesh together. It’s too showboat-y of a song to me, even though it’s one of their most popular songs, so someone must disagree with that. But other than that, I like the vocal samples here and they really add an interesting wrinkle to the rest of the album.
The vocalists on this album are used as instruments just like any other, which is fine, in fact it’s done pretty well here. These songs are focussed on helping to build the album’s atmosphere that was built by composition rather than building atmospheres all on their own, leading the narrative charge. They’re more of a helping hand than a driving force, which is fine since this album is more focussed on composition. The theme of this album was going to be some sort of overarching story with the working title, Pablo’s Cruise, about travelling all over the world to find the lost love of one’s life, but the Avalanches thought that was too obvious, which I’m slightly disappointed by because that sounds like a really compelling idea! However, what we got was compelling as well. It’s a collection of songs that is an ode to disco, 90s dance music, even hip hop, Motown and just music in general. This is a genuinely creative album and if you’re a music fan, you need to soak in every second of it, and more than that you should dance to it.
CONCLUSION
Yeah, Since I Left You is a good album. It’s the first album of its kind and, outside of a few moments where I got bored or I thought it was flaunting itself a little too much, I enjoyed it. Again, I find I respect this album more than I like it and I already like it quite a bit. But HOW MANY SAMPLES DID THEY USE AGAIN?! I wanna learn how to use a sampler and I want Shaan to teach me how the button machine works when the pandemic is over, pretty please. But anyway, this album is an interesting one that I barely know how to talk about. Production is more effects based than recording based as I’m pretty sure none of this was recorded live. However, it is a nice glue to keep all the samples together. It plays more into the school of thought that production is inherently compositional. Speaking of which, composition is the mainstay of this album. Thousands of songs went into this album and the end product is very different from the originals, but somehow this album is still cohesive, coherent and effective. You can really treat this album as one long piece of music. It’s the most club mix I’ve ever heard in my life. Sometimes this is to this album’s detriment as I feel like ideas can sometimes be dragged out longer than they should be, as well as being a bit of a hassle to shuffle if that’s your thing. Lyrics are purely aiding the compositional ideas here, as they are samples just like the instruments. They don’t lead the narrative charge, but they are more of a helping hand. But all in all, this is a creative and fun album with a very interesting, and I’m sure time and resource consuming style of composition that it helped to pioneer. It’s definitely worth a try if you’re into dance music and are looking for something weird and interesting to throw on and have a good time with.
I’m giving this one a Decent 7/10.
FAVOURITE TRACKS: Since I Left You, Two Hearts in ¾ Time, Avalanche Rock, Flight Tonight, Close To You, Diner’s Only, Electricity, Tonight May Have To Last Me All My Life, Pablo’s Cruise, Etoh, Summer Crane, Live At Dominoes, Extra Kings
LEAST FAVOURITE TRACK: Frontier Psychiatrist
Comments