Sampling wizards The Avalanches mine magic from old ads and obsolete tech

Sampling wizards The Avalanches weaponise old media nostalgia in No Bad Memories A few familiar notes – the startup sound of an old computer, an antique advertising jingle – and suddenly you're teleported to the past. The Avalanches know this power intimately. And their new album weaponises it. "Everybody has a commercial they hear, a cereal or soft drink tune from 30 years ago, and it just transports them," Avalanches co-founder Robbie Chater tells Double J's Karen Leng. "It's phenomenal how it sticks with you over so long. You think you've forgotten it and then it hits." Nostalgia has been crucial to the Australian group since 2000's Since I Left You, their groundbreaking debut constructed from thousands of obscure analogue samples, made them unlikely stars. It took 16 mythical years, and losing four members, to make a sequel: the warm, psychedelic Wildflower and its panoply of not just samples but rappers and singers. We Will Always Love You in 2020 was a cosmic masterpiece inspired by the star-crossed romance of scientists Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. Now a trio – co-founders Chater, Tony Di Blasi and new member Andy Szekeres – they find inspiration in the past on new album No Bad Memories, mining sounds from outdated technology and advertising and their ability to trigger emotional impact. "It's a special power," says Szekeres. "A sound that can instantly take millions of people back to this intense feeling of emotion that's separate from the product." Even the album's title is sampled, from a 1980s ad for an obsolete medium most under 30 wouldn't recognise: floppy disks. "It's spruiking the quality of their data storage," says Chater. "Really clever [and] funny. It was a working title [but] began to take on another meaning." Talent and technology Spanning 31 tracks, No Bad Memories has everything fans love about The Avalanches. A dense fantasia that's joyful, funky, soulful yet capable of tugging on the heartstrings and boasting another all-star cast of guests. From returning collaborators Jamie xx, Karen O and Rivers Cuomo to in-demand producers Barry Can't Swim, Tunisia's Khadija Al Hanafi, Japanese music legend Haruomi Hosono and Ryoji Ikeda's sensory-testing experiments. An overlooked bridge from Carly Simon's Make Me Feel Something becomes the sparkling centrepiece of One More Fantasy, an Avalanches specialty. Lead single Together unites electronic acts Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and viral musician Prentiss with video game-y synths and a children's chorus liberated from a '70s TV adaptation of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five. Its fizzy rhythm is threaded with mouse clicks, loading data, camera shutters and jingles for Nokia and Toshiba. It's a kaleidoscopic album where legacy acts and emerging talent co-mingle with forgotten jingles and the physical clicking, whirring and static of antiquated devices. "The sounds our generation knows," notes Chater, "also, when it goes wrong." Szekeres adds: "I still have trauma … Like, a zip disk drive plugged into a sampler that stopped working. It's a very distinct sound." The dreaded Windows error and malfunctioning hardware are among the record's numerous Easter eggs. Where The Avalanches once dug through op-shop vinyl crates for inspiration, No Bad Memories sent them down YouTube rabbit holes. "So much fun! We need to be excited to give us the energy to make a project because obviously it's lots of archival work; very time-consuming," says Chater. The resulting tapestry thrives in whimsy, melancholy and imagination. A bittersweet soundtrack that both critiques and celebrates how consumer culture sells emotion, not just product. "You're growing up and its capitalism coming at you. You don't have a choice of whether you absorb all this messaging or not," says Chater. "But then also a lot of the ads are really beautiful – the photography, that saturated colour – and the jingles stick in your mind. "I love how I'm not even sure how I feel about it. Because on one hand, we've been sold this impossible dream. And on the other hand, I remember it fondly." The art of advertising The three estimate they "probably made more [ads] than we sampled". With visual artist Jonathan Zawada, they conjured Takumi Digital Archives, a fictional company behind walkmans, cameras, shampoo, magazines, you name it. They built an interactive website, cast The Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osment as a Takumi employee for promotional videos and made physical prototypes to market the album. "You can really go off on a tangent. 'Maybe we're going to start actually making these products,'" Szekeres recalls. "Then you stop and go, 'actually, what are we doing here?'" Stitching together commercials, real and imagined, was a challenge but a crucial "part of the record's DNA", says Chater. "We had a lot of fun exploring the craft of advertising music." A big influence was Suzanne Ciani, a 1970s electronic music pioneer known for pinball game sounds and brand audio idents. "One of our heroes, [she] wrote amazing jingles for Coke and Atari on a modular synth," says Chater of Ciani, who features on the track Our Love Is Alive. Another milestone was enlisting Mike Patton, the "phenomenal voice" out front of Faith No More and Mr Bungle. A long-time fan, Patton narrates commercials for the "Superfun!" game system, emulating the '90s "console wars" between Sega and Nintendo. "Always fighting with each other [through] very bro-y, frat-testosterone ads. Mike was perfect for that. Some of the stuff he sent through was just wild." Deadlines and details Initially, The Avalanches planned a swift follow-up to their last album. "Eight to 10 songs, no concept. [Just] this great, feel-good party record," explains Chater. "We're like, 'We'll knock it out in six months!" Those plans fell by the wayside as their tendency for painstaking detail emerged. "It's difficult. I definitely know if something's not right and I'll be frustrated and push and push and push until it's working for me," says Chater. "We don't want to take too long making records. "We love having a deadline now and trying to hit it. Even if we didn't hit it exactly. "You certainly get better at letting go and relaxing a bit." Chater says Di Blasi acts a welcome counterpoint. "We can get a bit cerebral," he confesses. "He's like, 'Sometimes guys, I don't want to have a f***ing instruction manual to understand the record. I just want to have a good time.'" No Bad Memories manages to have its cake and eat it too. Feel-good dance music and joyous pop rubs shoulders with experimental sound collage, like a house party featuring museum exhibits as breakout rooms. You can switch off and enjoy the ride, or dig in and admire the artistic alchemy, flipping obsolete formats and overlooked sounds into collaborations subverting memory, loss and nostalgia. No Bad Memories proves looking backward isn't just escapism; it's about reclaiming agency. "That's been a big part of this whole project, thinking about that we're all participants in this crazy, late-stage capitalism system," Chater says. "Our music's on Spotify, we're on Instagram that's owned by Meta, probably not the most ethical companies in the world. "It's really important for each of us to think about how we participate in that system and where we're comfortable and what lines we want to draw." No Bad Memories is out October 16. The Avalanches Australian tour kicks off in Perth on February 27. [Image text:] SD A different voice. Ultra High Durability LOWNOISE