It’s a concept album and it’s a vertigo-inducing portal gun through music history. The Avalanches leave no rock unturned: disco, minimalism, funk, traditional pop, bodily noises, some hip-hop. The anonymity yet ubiquity of many of the samples make the record an astounding retrospective of musical achievement. An intricately stitched, ever-evolving tapestry: sometimes achingly soulful, often irresistibly danceable, and now and again, freaky electronic bliss. It’s too much. Hard to say what sociopolitical message might lurk within other than “dance to the music!” But maybe that’s a pretty profound statement for an album like this. Such a cogent coalescence of far-out and eclectic samples reveals the power of the DJ, of the phonic plunderer. The Avalanches listened to more underground music than Ian Mercer dreams about, and they hand-selected some of the grooviest grooves, the bumpinest breaks, the gnarliest riffs, and some hilarious vocal samples to boot. That it’s composed of prerecorded work by almost limitless artists seems to negate inherent any ideological baggage of the readymade. So the conscious assembly of these fragments must have some meaning, whether thematically or within the cultural context of hip-hop and EDM, right? At the very least, it is the greatest tip of the hat any DJ or fan could give to his musical heritage, his influences, his favorite shit.
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