Anyone seen the Avalanches live????

the live show is chaotic and exhilirating, bristling with energy and fun. all 6 (well, these days it's five cos gordon has left over artistic differences... that's what his mum says anyway.) of them are jumping around like small primates, maybe lemurs (they are all short- arses, specially dexter.), swapping instruments... they have live drums and guitars and singing and rapping, and they've programmed most of their samples into a keyboard (sorry i can't be more specific). they also have, of course, a turntable, helmed mainly by james and dexter, but also lots of swapping there. so yes, it's loud, there's jumping and running around, and there's lots and lots of big, wide, grinning. at their last live show in melbourne, about a year ago now, they also had some extra folk coming off and on stage from all over the place... some of them were playing trumpets/other brass. one man in a fisherman's hat had a really odd array of percussion dangling around him. another guy's role seemed to be nothing more than leering. he came on during 'rock city' and strutted around topless like iggy pop in leather pants and sunglasses. he seemed to be very good at it.

and despite, or probably more because of, all this chaos, it sounds fantastic. they somehow manage to add more swagger and more funk to their sound (maybe just because it's really, really loud), and i find it utterly irresistable.

all the tracks they play are interspersed with snippets of other people's records... they'll finish 'since i left you', and marvin gaye will fade in and we'll all listen to that for a while, and then they'll start the next few songs. in that sense it's more like a live performance of the gimix tape than their album. some people are put off by the stop-startness of it, but i love it. then, when it's all over, dexta and james or robbie or whoever tag-team dj for another 3 hours or so, while the other guys come and dance with us plebs :)

*they may very well have more than one turntable :)

i wish i lived in australia.

I heard they pull out all the stops since they don't have any stinkin lawyers looking over their shoulders.