The Avalanches – Since I Left You

Listen, I could sit here for hours and talk to you about how this album introduced me to dance music, how it changed how I think and listen to music in general, and ultimately how I interface with the world and process life. If you reached out, I would be happy to talk to you about why this is my favorite album of all time, forever and ever. But I honestly think you should just listen to it yourself. At your most vulnerable moment, the sounds of "Since I Left You" will grant you a bird's eye view of a world rich with possibility.

A bit like Shaquille O'Neal in the NBA, "Since I Left You" is sort of a Y2K glitch : a true powerful thing we never witnessed before.
In this case, the first LP of The Avalanches is a deluge of sounds and discoveries. A kaleidoscope with no real equivalent in the history of electronic music.
Before the 90's, the use of a sample was considered as conspicuous and the lack of inventiveness by the DJs mocked by people who had the funny habit of forgetting that the Stones and Led Zeppelin, to name a few, did also use some pieces of old blues repertoires.
Fortunately, the cornerstones that are "Paul's Boutique" by the Beastie Boys and, later, "Endtroducing" by DJ Shadow enabled sampling to become relevant in the music industry.

Then came out "SInce I Left You", a collage using from 900 to over 3000 samples according to different sources. Despite this, the Aussie band succeeded to maintain a homogeneity, a coherence in such a mess.
The notion of song almost becomes obsolete here : apart from a few more constructed and quite directly identifiable pieces, as such as the funky bomb "Electricity" or the tube "Frontier Psychiatrist", the rest is sort of a wonderful magma, constantly evolving, offering the confused listener a playful and dancing delirium.
A prime example is "A Different Feeling", where what is first a sunny beach soundtrack switches to an ethereal orchestra.

One of the best productions from the first year of the 21st century, and also one of my favorite Australian acts along with EK, Sonic Animation and Silverchair.

Beware of this release as the copyright people cut out almost a full minute from the original release's mix that contained samples they didn't like, due to legal issues. The removals included: Wayne and Shuster's "I Was a TV Addict" ("Radio" spoken intro); a sample from the film "Midnight Run" starring Robert De Niro (spoken conversation in "Diners Only"), and a guitar/strings sample (in the middle of "Little Journey"); furthermore, there was a drastic alteration to "Summer Crane" which added weird whistling/wind samples. I don't know about you, but I'd rather return this to the store and continue listening to the original before the band releases their promised deluxe edition (which, hopefully, (although unlikely) restores the deleted samples).