from the LP Since I Left You, Modular Recordings, 2000Composed entirely of song collages that were created from over 3,500 different samples, Since I Left You, the debut album by Aussie electronic collective The Avalanches, took DJ Shadow’s concept for …Endtroducing to a level never before seen; I don’t envy the poor chap who was put in charge of legally clearing all those samples! This track is one of the best on the album, a panoply of brass, strings, synths & percussion weaving themselves into an ever-morphing tapestry that moves through several different sections before sliding into an extended coda that plays us out in tribal fashion. The amount of obsessive attention that must be paid to a song like this one is almost unimaginable, much less an entire album’s worth, as mashing that many samples together could easily sound like a dissonant & horrible mess. Everyone’s been waiting patiently for their next album to drop for damn near close to a decade now, and I’ll bet you can guess what the hold-up is---sample clearance.
