This Australian sample-tastic duo hit paydirt with the first album ‘Since I Left You’ around 20 years ago.
BM remembers seeing them at the Arches, Glasgow (ask your granny) when they were shall we say more hesitant and reliant on malfunctioning machines. All these years later, with only 2two further albums to their name (as well as some pretty cool remixes, Belle and Sebastian included) they rock up on an unpromising Monday night in Glasgow…. Would they be exhausted, washed up and devoid of that x-factor that sets crowds alight… well, the circumstances didn’t look too promising…
Except…!
Even during the support act (American rap duo who were ok, sorry not going to name them), the crowd went mental, and when the headliners eventually appeared it was pure mayhem, people just losing their shit. And this lot sure know how to work a crowd, the two of them behind the decks (well various electronic machines anyway, no sign of actual scratching or spinning discs, they are well beyond that now) give us cheesy 70s disco, samples galore and drop-downs and codas a-plenty, prompting some massive displays of mental dancing from the crowd. A mixture of excitable students and seasoned groovers, they pure lapped it up…
Material was drawn from all three albums but rather than a nostalgia-fest, instead the Avalanches appear to be moving on apace, grafting whatever they see fit into a well-oiled, precision-tooled EDM monster of a show…
There was an encore, it was emotional, the track names don’t really matter now but this was a hell of a show, and at such close quarters as well – the main comparison would be maybe The Chemical Brothers with some slightly cheesier tunes, but never tipping over into self-parody – probably one of the best EDM acts on the planet, this relatively intimate show just blew everyone’s socks off…