New Avalanches Song

New music from The Avalanches will always get a mention here.

The Avalanches

Following We Will Always Love You, a second new single, Running Red Lights, has been released from The Avalanches upcoming album.

The song features vocals by Weezer's Rivers Cuomo and most notably, some lines from David Berman's Darkness and Cold by Alabama-born rapper Pink Siifu.  I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but Pink gets the lines wrong. The protagonist in Darkness and Cold sleeps in a "band-aid pink Chevette" while his ex-lover goes out with someone else in a "champagne-pink Corvette,"  The rapper Pink has them both in champagne-pink Corvettes.  

But no matter, it's still a touching tribute and gives the late Berman a posthumous writing credit on The Avalanches new album. 

The Avalanches

There's a lot I can say about the new Avalanches single, We Will Always Love You.  Or maybe there isn't a lot I could say, but either way it doesn't matter because whatever I say would be inadequate compared to what they themselves have to say:

Sometimes we receive a message. Telling us our music has been there; through dark times, loneliness, loss.

There are no words to express how moving or profound this connection with you is.

Because the music was born out of such moments itself, and so it is felt, by those with open hearts, on the same wavelength it was first created.

Morse Code beamed and received by hearts and hearts alike.

Our new record is about such journeys, from darkness to light.

About life after (all kinds of) death. About the transcendent nature of music itself.

Every voice ever played on the radio over the last 100 years now exists in the stars; the transmissions of these singers are forever floating around out there, lost in the cosmos, endlessly travelling.

Tonight Smokey Robinson duets with Dev Hynes and The Roches.

Those spirits are out there.

We are each a tune, floating in space

And this one's for you.

The Avalanches employ pluderphonics, sampling existing recorded music in lieu of producing their own to create something new and original.  The principal sample for We Will Always Love You comes from Smokey Robinson & The Miracles's I'll Take You Any Way That You Come.  The Roches and the Australian Boys Choir also make appearances.

This Is Not Normal

Late last year, experimental veterans Negativland released True False, one of two interconnected double albums the band plans to release within the year. It samples vocalists who have never met and contemplates the absurdity of everyday life, particularly the surrealism of the current political situation in America. In the songs, Negativland samples things like Fox News hosts, Occupy microphone checks, and ecoterrorists.

Formed in San Francisco, Negativland made a major impact not only on experimental music, but popular culture and mass media as a whole. Negativland coined the term "culture jamming" to describe their style of subversive media manipulation, similar to composer John Oswald's concept of plunderphonics. Assembling much of their work out of found and re-appropriated material, particularly easily recognizable sounds and images from advertisements and other mainstream media, the group create dense, semi-musical collages which provide surreal commentary on topics ranging from religion to celebrity culture to intellectual property issues.

Back in 2014, I saw Negativland perform at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival.

In Seattle Weekly, Dave Lake wrote of that performance, "Negativland were definitely not what the EDM kids were expecting."   As Dave Segal further described in Seattle's weekly paper, The Stranger, "Negativland's subtlety is too humorous for a festival crowd, and it sent the jackass kids who were yelling 'Drop a beat!' and 'Let's get it!' scattering after 10 minutes."

Hilariously, Negativland punctuated their set with faux advertisements, like this one:

 

They worked about three of four of these "commercials" into their Bumbershoot set, each as specific and as sarcastic as this one.  That is not normal.