Avalanches

The Avalanches have emerged as Australia's premier innovative hip-hop oriented act.

The Melbourne group's story begins in 1995 when Robbie Chater and his then flatmate, singer Darren Seltmann, decided to make music. Darren was inspired by thrashy Japanese punk band Ultra Bidet who he'd seen while in New York, where he was the drummer in short-lived indie-rock group Ripe.

Initially calling themselves Swinging Monkey Cocks and then Quinton's Brittle Bones Robbie and Darren added long-term pals Gordon McQuilten and Tony Diblasi, recruited Japanese singers and drummers and collected organ-based records. Finally they brought World DMC DJ Champion Dexter Fabay into their ranks. Not knowing how to approach him, they wrote Dexter a letter.

In the process they had moved from thrash punk played on two string guitars to the world of samples, a hybrid of indie rock and innovative hip hop and had renamed themselves the Avalanches. Starting their studio adventures by sneaking into university campus studios for all-night recording sessions, the first Avalanches single 'Rock City/ Thank You Caroline' was released in 1997 on friends' Fitzroy-based Trifeka Records. They started performing widely and attracted a long term recording deal.

The 'El Producto' EP was followed by more touring and support spots with the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. After Leo Silverman, owner of Rex Records discovered a limited edition of Rock City in London, he contacted the group and signed them to Rex offshoot RX. The Avalanches in the meantime enlisted keyboard player James De La Cruz to broaden their sound even further.

Being in The Avalanches was taking up a lot of the band members' time. They missed just rehearsing, sampling, and listening to records, so they made the decision to stop playing live for a while to enable them to spend a fair amount of time recording an album. In all the album 'Since I Left You' took three years to complete. They wanted it to be a seemless sonic experience. Every time they made changes to the links between 'songs' the entire album had to be re-programmed. The 'songs' were created by finding samples and giving them a completely new musical function. The Avalanches album proved to be a departure from the group's MC-dominated pub-rock mode block party hip hop singles.

In Australia the 'Since I Left You' album was received warmly by their fans and broadened their audience significantly. In the UK dance circles hailed it as one of the best albums of 2001. And then in the middle of the promotional push Darren Seltmann's stage antics resulted in two stage accidents and an ankle operation which forced him and the band off the road.

On stage each member of The Avalanches samples and plays all the instruments, except Tony, who doesn't play any drums. In the studio, everyone plays everything but Darren sings a bit more than the rest.