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One of the perks of being a music journalist in the 90s and early-00s was the deep pockets the music industry still had to send writers off to far-flung places, often with an artist who may only have a promising single to peddle. The entire Jockey Slut office had fallen in love with Australian band The Avalanches around the turn of the millennium and they had something more substantial than a single to discuss. Their debut album ‘Since I Left You’ was ready – and I was chosen to fly to Melbourne to join them on their summer tour in January 2001.
The difference with the financing of the trip was that their label didn’t have a hefty slush fund so couldn't truly afford to send me. The band were on a subsidiary of XL Recordings called Lex and the label manager – Leo Silverman – paid for me to accompany him on the tour from his own wallet.
To the converted there was a strong belief in the-then sextet, a band clearly drunk on ideas. Everyone that came into contact with them got a little woozy too. One friend of mine even wrote them a poem thanking them for colouring our lives. They had made an album that sounded like Coldcut making whoopee in Brian Wilson’s sandpit and It had soundtracked the Jockey Slut office since 2000, while it languished in sample clearance hell. We had already featured the band twice in the magazine, but this would be their first front cover.
I joined the band at sun-kissed hippy locale Byron Bay and I recall my surprise that the band members looked so pale and sleight. They were obviously more at home in the studio or flicking through record racks than hitting the beach or getting buff. When the tour moved on to their hometown of Melbourne it became clear why the band sounded like they did. There’s no bay, no surf but hundreds of bars for bands to play in and countless second-hand record stores to sift through.
I was one of the lucky ones to see the band perform live, not just on the Australian tour but also at Camden’s Electric Ballroom in 2001. They were truly great live – unpredictable, chaotic and both punk and super pop. Sadly they were prevented from touring UK festivals in 2001 as Darren – the frontman – kept breaking the same leg he snapped prior to the Byron Bay gig I witnessed.
This no doubt hampered them from succeeding beyond their cult status, a situation made worse when we heard nothing further from them for many years. The yawning gap between releases made the Stone Roses seem prolific – just the 15 years between their debut and 2016’s brilliant 'Wildflower'. In that time the six-piece I met shed four members leaving just Robbie Chater and Tony Diblasi.
Reflecting on ‘Since I Left You’’s importance now it’s revealing how prophetic of the decade ahead it was. The more beatific tracks perhaps informed sampledelic chillwave acts like Panda Bear; their cut’n’paste DJ approach using cheesy pop with hip hop – captured on their Gimix mixtape that trailed the album – chimed with 2manydjs and Erol Alkan back when he was mashing up bootlegs, and their genuine love of using acts like Cyndi Lauper, ELO and Wings in their sets no doubt sparked a light bulb moment in fan Sean Rowley’s head when he started his Guilty Pleasures nights in 2004.
It was - and remains - a very important album. One person who finally succumbed to the band and their promise was XL’s Richard Russell. Leo Silverman told me that after reading this Jockey Slut article Russell was convinced the band should be elevated from Lex to XL and the album given proper support. Making this one press ‘jolly’ where the money really was well spent.
Sunday January 21. The Big Day Out, Gold Coast, Australia. The Electric Light Orchestra’s triumphant ‘Living Thing’ – all pomp, strings and strained falsetto – booms forth as gold glitter spirals downwards over the elated throng. Down the front, outstretched arms are flecked with champagne spurting from a bottle grasped by a cackling, wee Tasmanian devil. In the pit, a chap called Darren, who looks like KC (of & the Sunshine Band fame), adds to the spectacle by erupting awkwardly from a wheelie bin while his band mate James, sporting a straw hat but no underwear, eclipses these antics by simply parting his red sarong. The rest of the band, fists skywards, are soaked in sweat and, in one case, a little blood. It’s not, however, been one of The Avalanches’ most eventful gigs.
Several days previous, outside a small social club in the Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay, The Avalanches are facing legal action from a ‘fan’. After reaching the conclusion of a set that had weaved its way through theremin abuse, punk rock, turntablism and bursts of Cyndi Lauper, Darren, in a possible tribute to The Who, had destroyed a pair of wooden crutches (he broke his leg onstage months earlier). A rogue splinter was then thrown by a fan which scratched the face of a law student. What are the chances…
“There’s gotta be limits,” sighs Darren of their still nascent live set. “First there was the broken leg, then the guy with the splinter in his head…”
Limits, it seems, aren’t part of The Avalanches’ future plans. “We’ve got a lot of ambitions for the live show,” Darren spouts eagerly. “I’d love to do a TV special where all the samples are performed live. We’d have horses in the studio which we’d whip. Mexican guys will be mic-ed up and we’ll direct them. We’d like child proteges, kids who have mastered the piano, to play the samples.”
The most – justly – hyped band in years have been preparing for these extraordinary live shows over recent months while their debut album, ‘Since I Left You’, was halted by sample clearance, being, as it is, stuffed silly with nearly a thousand snippets from Other People’s Records. A Marge Simpson soundalike, whom the band refer to as ‘The Detective’, has been busy clearing each magic moment. The last to receive the green light was by Kid Creole and the Coconuts. The use of the bassline from Madonna’s ‘Holiday’, a crucial part of the segued album, was granted by the queen of pop herself. A first, apparently. But then it is a very special debut. ‘Since I Left You’ seems as much about The Beach Boys as the Beastie Boys. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Coldcut and Barry Adamson drift surreally through the mind too. It should be a kitchen sink mess, but through sheet pop savvy it’s a triumph. From lump-throatening melancholic moments, like the beautiful title track, through the cartoon goonery of the funky ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ and the mutant coffee table touches of the outro, it rocks against the orthodox.
Such a schizophrenic sound could only come from six like-minded but very different souls. This multi-cultural mash-up from Melbourne could have the same pop effect as The Spice Girls. Which one’s your favourite? There’s Filipino James De La Cruz, who’s thoughtful (he buys Jockey Slut some First Choice and Nina Simone records out of the blue) but prone to dropping his pants on stage. Diminutive Dexter Fabay is the ‘Tas Devil’ who claps his hands staccato-style when excited. Crisp-shirted Tony Diblasi is a Sicilian who likes mimicking Russians. Gregarious on stage, he was responsible for landing on and breaking Darren’s leg last year, though Robbie claims “he looks after us all”. Gordon ‘Gordie’ McQuiltern has cartoon big eyes which will seal his face with the tweenies. Like Tony, he mimics accents and is always the last to go to bed. He is also a tad nervous and once enquires of Jockey Slut: “Am I boring you?” when he is doing anything but. Robbie Chater is the quietest, bean-thin, inquisitive, restless and fiercely ambitious. He has a strange habit of wearing a jacket to the beach when the sun has its hat very firmly on indeed.
Robbie started the band with Darren Seltmann, who is a pretty complex individual. A lapsed Christian, Darren, who has developed tinnitus from playing in bands for years, has created an alter-ego – Hanky Bean, a Russian R’n’B singer with a taste for anal sex – and was once asked to slaughter a lamb, the kosher way, so he could make up his own mind about carnivorous pursuits. He once bought a duck to slay and cook but instead named it Ming and found it a home. His favourite meat? “Duck,” he says. Told you he was complex.
“I love the way new melodies can come from cutting up so many little bits of noise,” Robbie says of their delayed labour of love. “Noisy, sampled pop.”
The Avalanches didn’t always sound like this. As a four-piece, before the DJs James and Dexter came on board, they were akin to the chaotic punk groove of The Fall. Jamming in their lounge, from their ‘stage’ – a sofa – they would drip wax onto records so they’d get stuck in different grooves which they’d then improvise over. Then Robbie did a course at university that allowed him access to a recording studio after hours and the band went sampledelic. As Robbie has spent so much time sat, alone, in front of a computer monitor painstakingly piecing together their opus, it’s no surprise he sometimes refers to it as his own. The biggest party on the block to them sounds like anything but to him. “Making the record was a low, pretty personal process,” he says. “The record, to me, feels like lots of lonely, late nights. It’s so time-consuming making a record like that it becomes personal.”
The hunt for the golden samples – including horses, birds, harps, film dialogue and Boney M – seems fiercely competitive and can even lead to friction, as Gordie recalls. “Once I was on my way to a record store in my car (he drives a fabulous bright orange 70s Peugeot). Robbie asked where I was going and if he could join me. We pulled up outside the store and as I was parking Robbie jumped out of the car and ran into the shop so he could start looking through the seam of new records ahead of me. Now we have to take it in turns or we’re, like, grabbing at things: ‘I saw it first’.”
Darren side-steps this problem by simply buying entire record collections, either from folk who have ‘switched to CD’ or from the recently deceased. “The biggest was 5,000 LPs and 10,000 seven-inches. I went to see this old guy who was moving out of his house and I bought a bunch of records. He died two weeks later because the move upset his balance.”
We’re driving through the strange environs of Byron Bay in a purple ‘people carrier’, arms out of the windows, Neil Young crooning from the stereo. It resembles a hastily-assembled Wild West stage set which, as in ‘Blazing Saddles’, looks like it could collapse at any moment. Instead of guns and saloons, though, the stores here seem to sell nothing but tofu. In Byron Bay you can take home a picture of your aura for a few bucks and have your chakra realigned for a few dollars more. This is prime hippy surfer paradise and bronzed, fit, relaaaaaxed, young things are its inhabitants. It is also one of the prime escapes for the city-dwelling Aussies of the nearby Gold Coast and Brisbane.
“It’s a weird set-up in a weird town,” muses Tony as we enter ‘The Backroom’ of the hotel, the 500-capacity location of tonight’s gig. Neon ‘Miller’ signs line the bar, signed photographs from ABBA tribute bands are pinned on the walls and there’s a chaotic montage of photos from their regulars, no doubt accrued from hundreds of bingo nights. It does, surprisingly, have a jolly good sound system, though, which is issuing forth some old Crowded House hits as the band excitedly set up their equipment for the soundcheck.
Hours later pretty young things and Limp Bizkit fans (they pollute Australia) fill the carpeted floor as Dexter spins Arrested Development, Aaliyah and Suzanne Vega. He was placed second in the World DMC finals last year. Was he too pop to take pole position?
“It’s too easy to use hip hop,” he smiles. “I was fucked too. Jet lagged. I was sick of my routine, but when I performed, I forgot it was falling on fresh ears so the balance in that room was strange. I couldn’t be bothered and everyone was losing it. They liked it a lot.”
Backstage sitting in front of an eight-foot mirror covered in peeling band stickers, James is sitting, stamping his feet and jerking his head at nothing in particular, while Darren’s fated crutches are propped against the wall. Ben, a 21-year-old in the audience, is already a devotee of The Avalanches and has made ten of his mates pay fifteen dollars to see them tonight promising them a good time. “I saw them last year,” he shouts over Dre and Snoop Dogg. “They play straight-up funk, they’re fun, the ultimate high school pranksters. They’re the Beasties meets… someone electronic.”
His vague analogy is left in mid-air as Chris Farlowe’s 60s soul classic ‘Out of Time’ heralds the arrival of The Avalanches and they launch into a song that uncannily matches Ben’s description, with Darren stuttering like Mike Diamond over a soundtrack that recalls Stereolab.
There’s almost too much to take in at once: Tony salutes then folds his hand into the shape of a duck as if he’s casting shadows on the back of the hall; Dexter pogos furiously on the spot, putting out an imaginary fire; Gordie’s hand hovers across his ululating theremin; Darren holds his microphone as if he’s wiping dribble from his chin, and assorted Avalanches seem to fall over a lot. ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ – an Australian single which has made ‘you’re crazy as a coconut!’ a catchphrase has the audience bouncing higher than Dexter. They are one big ‘wow’.
Like on Lauryn Hill’s memorable ‘Miseducation…’ tour, the DJ and his record collection are used as a major part of the show as Dexter fills the gaps between their own material with classics like ‘The Theme from MASH’ and Wings’ ‘Band On The Run’, and creates live ‘bootlegs’ by throwing Madonna over Bob Dylan. The boys, meanwhile, all swap instruments, with Dexter playing keyboards and singing through a vocoder on ‘Electricity’, James banging a tambourine so hard his hand later swells, Darren taking to the drums for most of the set and Robbie swinging a bass. They also leave the stage frequently (even five minutes after their entrance) and return for many ‘encores’. ‘Electricity’ is halted halfway through as the band exit stage right, leaving Tony with a huge question mark over his head as Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ drifts across it. Another sampled horse neighs, another chap falls over. Cue ‘Living Thing’, glitter, champagne and the demise of the crutches.
“There’s a lot to take in isn’t there?” Dexter says of the show the following day. “There’s not many slots you can put us in.”
James, a cigarette sticking out of his shirt buttonhole, is crashed out on a sofa, thinking about the rise of the band he joined just over a year ago. “From smoking in a grungey, smelly house to going to the UK. It’s going to be fun.”
Tony, whose unusual onstage dancing the others refer to as “extreme crazy animal funk”, harks back to their early days, contrasting it with their new-found fortune. “I lived with Robbie for six months, seven years ago. Two little mattresses on the floor in the same room, living in each other’s pockets. I was bumming around, living on the dole and I thought: ‘Fuck it, see how it goes’, joined the band and three months later we were playing in front of 3000 people with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.” Right now they are all waiting to be shot for their first UK front cover. Your lives are going to change dramatically, I tell them. “What do you mean?” panics Dex. “You’re scaring me. I don’t want nothing to change! Aah, shit.”
On another sofa, in another apartment, Robbie and Darren, the band’s nucleus, seem deflated from the previous night and the threat of legal action hanging over them. “We’ll know not to do that again,” Darren admits with a sigh. The despondence doesn’t last long though. They remember their New Year’s Eve gig, which included a live brass band called The Syncopators. “They’re in their 50s and all have Tourette’s syndrome,” Darren explains, adding that “at our early gigs we could only fit one song of samples on the disc, so we had to entertain the audience with bits of stand-up comedy”.
Has it been difficult turning an album of samples into a live show I ask?
“Yeah,” Robbie nods, resplendent in a T-shirt for a local building firm which boasts ‘The best lay in town’. “We had to come up with something loosely based on it. We always wanted it to be a party we happened to be playing at, rather than a gig. We want to walk off when we play a certain record and come back on when we feel like it.”
Are you, perhaps, expecting too much of your audience?
“Yeah,” Darren smiles. “Bring on the dancing dogs.”
After staying in the gaudy Gold Coast, where their triumphant Big Day Out appearance takes place – all casinos, strip bars and flash hotels – you can see why Melbourne is home for The Avalanches. It’s a sieve-headed-dude-free zone that’s full of cult bookstores and second-hand record shops.
“There’s loads of op shops and thrift stores,” Gordie affirms, “so it’s easy and cheap to set up home. All our records, furniture and clothes are from there.” Which may explain his Guns N’ Roses cap. “When we started, we bought crazy old organs and shitty guitars for fifty bucks. There’s no bay, no surf, but there are hundreds of bars for bands to play in.”
One such place is home to Dexter’s Lounge every Tuesday night where, according to the chalkboard outside, ‘Dexter plays whatever the funk he likes…”, from The Chi-Lites, Phoenix and Dennis Wilson to Daft Punk, OI’ Dirty Bastard and Alan Braxe.
All the band are here chatting and getting drunk. Jockey Slut is introduced to their girlfriends, relatives, mates and extended family. Tony is showing off some new trousers and another crisp shirt, while Robbie is propped up by a fruit machine in the corner. “We’re so close and we’re always sharing music,” he says, looking over at the band’s DJ wing. “It’s really funny that Dexter hadn’t heard The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s…’ until recently and so he’s gone bananas for them. James is always bringing brilliant dance and house records. It’s grown really organically. James’ sets are all house and The Beach Boys.”
As that unlikely fusion of styles has already made them cult heroes in the UK, we talk about their imminent visit to Europe where they will DJ, play live and no doubt end up on the cover of Smash Hits with ‘Which is your favourite?’ emblazoned across their pearly whites. Which is a good thing.
Robbie pauses, ponders, smiles. “I hope we’ve got a chance to go where we’re going and to grow,” he says. “We’re young. We’ll make some great records over the next few years.”
They already have.
