The Avalanches: We Will Always Love You – Obscure, dominant and transient

When the Aussie electronic trio Avalanches released debut album Since I Left You in 2000, it almost immediately became a legacy record. The pressure to follow up manifested in Wildflower, a dreamy but hair-pulling, financially draining and sometimes psychotically psychedelic route that took 16 years to complete. We didn’t have to wait as long for round three and this collaborative-heavy album explores the frequencies of noise and the flickers of light between life and death.

Now down to a duo, Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi sew thousands of samples –familiar and obscure, dominant and transient – from songs of artists that have passed away to push the theme of “death, the afterlife, the stars, celestial beings and everything that’s out there”.

Through cascades of house, disco, folk, gospel and trip-hop, eclectic guests such as Kurt Vile, Sananda Maitreya (previously known as Terence Trent D’Arby), Karen O, Vashti Bunyman, Tricky, Neneh Cherry, Dev Hynes and Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell contribute philosophical musings on life and love.

Spanning 25 tracks, We Will Always Love You opens with heartfelt voice messages and closes with Morse code bleeps sent out by Nasa scientists to a star cluster in 1974. By drawing out the torture of longing for an absent loved one,  Chater and Di Blasi masterfully convey the possibility that there’s more to life than we dare to think.

[ Theavalanches.com ]