When did the throbbing grooves and vamped-up funk of dance music lose the giddy euphoria that once defined it?
Its late-1990s revivalists are so busy trying to eclipse challengers to the dance floor throne while creatively surpassing their own prior work that they have created music ambitious in production but devoid of joy.
Daft Punk, lost in a sea of vocoders, tries so hard to create baroque prog-disco sub-genres that it has forgotten how to walk the line between hollow kitsch and self-consciously ironic nostalgia. Basement Jaxx figures the only way to improve the formula that created 1999's exuberant, house-reviving "Remedy" is to increase its speed, sexual fervidness, obnoxious aggressiveness and, well, everything, except restraint.
But just like Cher, dance music doesn't die or go away; eventually it just gets overhauled and comes back looking and sounding fresh, each time a bit more drastically than the time before.
Enter the Avalanches, a six-deep DJ crew that simultaneously drops pulsatory beats and cut-and-pastes more than 900 obscure samples into entirely cohesive pieces better than anyone this side of the Handsome Boy Modeling School. If anyone is capable of giving dance music a good smack and kicking it back to the dance floor, it's these hyped Australians.
"Since I Left You" captures the unhinged energy that motivated Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx's earlier works, partially because it cultivates the innocent desire to get people moving in a way that only a debut can.
The opening title track starts simply enough: Some Spanish guitar licks joined by genial flutes are met by harmonic cooing and gradually escalating strings. Get a drink, have a good time now. "Welcome to paradise," the first voice sample calmly comforts. It's the "Love Cruise" theme filtered through blithe late '60s morning and a sun-drenched afternoon daydream.
|
|
|
Suddenly, an assuaging bluesy diva emerges, declaring, "Since I've left you, I've found the world so new." A swanky bass line, hand claps and driving keyboard riffs propel the track further while seemingly random horse neighs are interjected in place of scratches. Before you realize it, it's midway through the album's third track. Instead of noticing the eccentricity of the samples or even the shift in songs, you just sit there bobbing your head, lulled by such meticulous construction.
Just like any good house DJs, the Avalanches refuse to let the momentum stop for one second; pauses between songs are not an affordable option. Songs don't end as much as they stick around for the beginning of the next track before departing. This isn't a party record - it is a party.
The second-rate albums the Avalanches tear through yield pastiches of pulsing French house ("Flight Tonight"), wispy barroom piano jazz ("Tonight"), atmospheric instrumentals better than any track of Air's recent "10,000 Hz Legend" ("Electricity"), synthesizer-laden digitized bombast ("Live at Dominoes") and even exotic hip-hop ("Avalanche Rock").
The brilliance, however, does not necessarily lie in the album's broad scope. What distinguishes the Avalanches from any kid using "Paul's Boutique" as a blueprint for cutting records in his basement is the group's ability to constantly mutate an album through samples without sacrificing its consistency or hypnotic mood.
Using restraint as a weapon, the Avalanches hold hostage the expectation for an unadulterated outburst of their juxtaposing dynamism. Thirteen songs in, though, the DJs can't resist the beckoning urge anymore. On "Frontier Psychiatrist" a whole album's worth of pent-up mixing virtuosity explodes with the force of the group's namesake. The Avalanches relentlessly attack the track with samples of psychoanalytical jargon, old Wild West duels and offbeat cinematic rambling. After finally supplying the desired hit, the song leaves a spectrum of confounded emotions in its delirious path: exceeded pleasure, estranged confusion and utter marvel.
Ironically, it took an album composed of the ancient samples of artists deemed obsolete to incite such emotions and reinvigorate originality in an ailing genre.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
