We review “No Bad Memories”, a musical journey through the memory of The Avalanches
What a streak we’ve been on. One who is no longer a child, has just survived movies like “Buddy” or the segment “Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance” included within the ninth installment of “V/H/S/” (Mixtape), to fully encounter another perversion of our most infantile past. That not only that. A nostalgia wrapped this time in an ultrasonic format where it is impossible to ignore inventiveness and good production. The Avalanches They propose a colossal sound collage where we are going to face a spin of ideas and delusions. An extravagant exercise in which countless commercial breaks and technological sounds that are obsolete or completely unknown to many are happily overflowing.
Resuming the start. There is also a strong presence of children’s voices and elements that remind us of childhood songs. Distorted innocence capable of generating an atmosphere that feels like a dream or a blurry memory from the most distant past. The first in all the careto, and that is that “No Bad Memories”opens with “Bd-R” where – and with the permission of the parakeet Cornelius – – one goes back to that surreal and revolutionary TV program that was “The Imaginary Planet”. Impossible not to recognize “Arabesque No. 1” by Isao Tomita originally released in 1974. We will never stop being children, and this album will help us connect with that past, zap inside our heads and embrace again those blank worlds where everything was possible.
It could be said that The Avalanches went too far with the glue. And thank goodness, I add. When the century began, these guys burst in with “Since I Left You”an ode to unbridled sampling that turned thousands of sound fragments into a party without stylistic customs. Heirs to the playful spirit of Bentley Rhythm Ace and Coldcut – the ones who encouraged me to pick up and play with a Roland sampler for the first time – they understood that the rules are meant to be broken. Fun to power! Even if it later turns into a bureaucratic nightmare. After all, we grew up and are no longer kids trying to sell bags of pipes full of sand, or horribly made bracelets, in an improvised stall in the summer in the middle of the street. Oh, you didn’t do it?
Returning to the present. In “No Bad Memories” They hit the mixer again. It’s as if someone pressed all the buttons at once. A fascinating nonsense of thirty-one cuts and fifty-two minutes that, at times, works more like a collection of mutant jingles than as an album of songs. Virtually everything appears and disappears without asking permission. Some pieces barely have time to develop a personality before passing the baton to the next occurrence. There is no patience, no space to settle: immediacy and sonorous pirouette rule here. On many occasions this concept leaves us in a kind of coitus interruptus. “Like Clockwork/Hit By Traffic”, “I Give Everything I Have 2 U” either “Highfield”For example.
It is not until the final stretch, thanks to topics like “Our Love Is Alive” (with Suzanne Ciani and Barry Can’t Swim), “Total Recall” (with Mike Patton) and “Final Credits” (with Loaded Honey), that we discovered productions that are closer to what many understand by song. And yes, when it seemed that the album was destined to reset our neurons only with that mixture of technological prehistory and delicatessen advertising as a common thread, The Avalanches once again demonstrate to us – with the irony of who can do it – this triple reward in a deliberate way. Think about it, are they the ones who have lost the meaning of the song or are we the ones who have lost the patience to listen to songs?
Although we don’t want to admit it, we live in the snack generation. This collage is a fairly accurate reflection of our life. About the relationship with technology, consumption and a culture condemned to move from one novelty to another before having finished processing the previous one. The Australians delve into all this and allow us to reflect on memory and the future. The past is not recovered: it is chopped up, processed and put back into circulation. Like any product with a good marketing campaign.
I don’t want to ignore the parade of collaborators who help turn this nonsense into a more weighty message. Among them, names as relevant as Ryoji Ikeda, Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza, Jamie xx, Panda Bear, Carly Simon, Vegyn, Khadija Al Hanafi, Prentiss… or the aforementioned Mike Patton, Suzanne Ciani or Barry Can’t Swim. And within the purely musical, in the midst of this singular fulfillment of looting, the moments stand out in which soul, dance-pop and disco sounds are honored. In short, a festival of cuts, swerves and capers that leaves your brain spinning or spinning. Nonsense? Yes. Shall we get off? No way.
