Attribute it to cultural isolation if you must, but much like famous Belgians, great Australian dance acts are few and far between. Sure, it has supplied a smorgasbord of gnarly rockers, but when it comes to visceral thrills, to joyous, discofied grooves, Oz's contribution has been negligible at best.
Which makes Melbourne's The Avalanches that much more precious. A six-strong crew who, not unlike Happy Mondays and The Clash, function like the close-knit gang of rock mythology, they're a dance band with a grasp of pop's life-affirming élan, a pop act whose approach to dance apes hip hop's cut 'n' paste code and a bunch of wide-eyed dreamers who abide by their own rules. Live therefore, as is their wont, they swap instruments, emphasizing their distaste for rock 'n' roll etiquette, while they eulogize such disparate talents as Neil Young, Wu-Tang Clan and the 'legendary' Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson's co-writer on The Beach Boys' album 'Smile'. It's this reluctance to adhere to dancefloor 'do's and 'don't's that makes their debut album, the bewitching 'Since I Left You', such a glorious introduction to their madcap world. Playful, twisted, psychedelic, delirious and infectious, it's the sound of six men who spent most of adolescence rummaging through the bargain bins in Melbourne's record shops, construct ing their own post-modern disco-pop amalgam from rubbish '50s rejects and saccharine '60s pap. "Our records make sense in their own world," says Robbie Chater, the group's baby-faced spokesman. "We always wanted to make a record with a life of its own that you could lose yourself in."
It was ever thus. When Robbie and his then flatmate, singer Darren Seltmann, decided to make music in the mid-1990s they were in thrall to Japanese punk band Ultra Bidet whose thrashy show Seltmann had seen while in New York, where he was the drummer in short-lived indie-rock group Ripe. As, first, Swinging Monkey Cocks then Quinton's Brittle Bones (don't ask), Chater and Seltmann crafted their own take on trashy punk, culminating in them smashing up their kitchen and melting their freezer with a flame-thrower for, you know, a laugh. Slowly, with three long-term pals recruited to their ranks - Gordon McQuilten, Tony Diblasi and Dexter Fabay - they swapped their tired two-string guitars for an array of samples, transmogrifying into an unlikely hybrid of The Fall and very drunk, innovative hip hop.
Their first single Rock City/ Thankyou Caroline was released through friends label Trifeka records and attracted the attention of Modular Recordings with whom they signed a long term deal. They soon released a new Ep 'El Producto' and toured widely. XL offshoot Rex records licensed original demos and released Undersea Community, a four track ep in 1998. It was followed by the even better 'Electricity' - a riot of quirky dayglo beats and junk shop-friendly funk - which afforded them a feature in dance mag Jockey Slut and support slots with The Beastie Boys and Public Enemy whose Flavor Flav dismissed the group's former manager.
Since then, in little over 18 whirlwind months, they've enlisted keyboard player James De La Cruz, watched Dexter finish runner-up in the DMC contest, put their own inimitable slant on Badly Drawn Boy's 'The Shining' and become, in Chater's words, increasingly "spastic" live, with James in particular earning a thumbs-up for "setting things on fire and pissing in rehearsal rooms".
"As a band," says Chater apropos of nothing, "we're excited by dancefloor sounds, things that get your blood boiling, but we've always wondered why a lot of those records don't feel any good. I guess that's the next step, but right now I can't put what we do into words." No? OK, allow me. The Avalanches - wizards of Oz. Fall (down) under their spell.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/avalancheshomebase/theband.html
