The Avalanches Close To New Album

Second album at the mixing stage

Australian cut ‘n’ paste duo The Avalanches are almost finished working on their second album.

Some things take time. The Stone Roses made fans wait five years for their second album, while Guns N Roses topped this by taking an astonishing fifteen years to cough up ‘Chinese Democracy’.

Down in Australia, The Avalanches have been attempting to complete their second album for eight years. Carefully constructed from an enormous array of samples, debut album ‘Since I Left You’ was a global success back in 2000.

Sessions for a potential follow up began in 2003 and have continued ever since. Recently, Modular Records released a statement explaining what the group were up to: “Things are still moving forward with the album, but unfortunately there’s been setbacks during the final stages due to illness (plus sample clearance can take an awful long time with these guys, as you know).”

Now The Avalanches have given Australian radio station Triple J a rare interview. Robbie Chater and Tony Diblasi told the broadcaster that their second album is now at the final mixing stage.

“It’s taken a long time, yeah. I mean it’s not really mixed or anything yet. We’ll probably take another ten years to get it mixed” they warned.

“Nothing’s mixed but it’s all kind of there. We’re still waiting for some vocals and things like that; I think the majority of the music is done. It probably just needs to be arranged a bit and mixed.”

As for their set up, it seems that The Avalanches have yet to move with the times. “It’s like a bedroom record just on a cheap computer which Robby still uses. The same Mac, a beige OS 7 with software they stopped using in 1997. I have all these half written songs so if I throw the computer away I can’t finish them.”

“Every time we take the computer somewhere we have to be really careful with it and put in all these little blankets and all this stuff so it doesn’t get broken. We’re just waiting for it to die but it’s hanging in there.”

Let’s hope the computer survives the mixing process…

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