‘Spend time going down rabbit holes’: how the Avalanches created their wildest album yet
The Avalanches have broadened their sampling on their new album, *No Bad Memories*, drawing on children’s science programmes, Tunisian music and the sounds of old technology. The record explores how advertising and devices can shape or distort personal memories, and its playful, disorienting sound marks what the group describe as their wildest album yet.
The album is accompanied by a 35-minute film starring Haley Joel Osment as an employee of a fictional digital archive service who collects people’s cherished belongings. As his work becomes strange, he struggles to tell his own memories from imagery absorbed through commercials. The Avalanches made the film in Japan over three weeks, often shooting in freezing conditions with a crew from Mexico.
- The Avalanches’ new album samples science shows, Tunisian music and vintage technology.
- *No Bad Memories* explores how advertising and devices affect memory.
- Haley Joel Osment stars in an accompanying 35-minute film.
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The Avalanches are an Australian electronic music group whose songs are built from samples—brief segments of existing recordings that they layer and remix together. This sampling-based approach has defined their work since the 1990s.
Sampling as a creative technique allows musicians to reference history, culture and other art forms within their work. The practice can explore how sound, memory and cultural meaning shift and transform, and how different eras and influences blend together in modern music.
The relationship between technology and human experience has become an increasingly common theme in art and music. This includes questions about how digital devices, algorithms and advertising might shape what people remember and perceive about the world around them.
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