“Once It Grabs You, It’s Got You For Life”: The Avalanches On The Magic Of Sampling And Their Ambitious Fourth Album, No Bad Memories

From an intimate dinner with Haruomi Hosono in Japan to studio sessions with Jamie xx and Barry Can’t Swim, the Aussie production collective talks self-perception, human connection, and the creative trials behind their new album, No Bad Memories. 

Over the past twenty-five years, The Avalanches have carved out one of the most singular legacies in electronic music. Since emerging from Melbourne at the turn of the millennium, Robbie Chater, Andy Szekeres and Tony Di Blasi have elevated the art of plunderphonics, resurrecting forgotten voices and dusty recordings to give them a whole new world to live in. Sampling wizards, sonic alchemists, crate-digging visionaries – they’ve been credited with nearly every label thrown at trailblazers of the craft. And rightly so. In their hands, even the most redundant of sounds can become something innovative and exciting. 

Their hugely acclaimed 2000 debut album Since I Left You was received as a cultural masterpiece, one that completely redefined the way sampling was approached at an ambitious scale, with the final result being an accumulation of more than 3600 samples stitched together intricately across eighteen tracks. Exploring themes of travel and movement as a means of emotional liberation and spiritual renewal, the record became an influential staple in electronic music, a project so revered it took sixteen years to release a follow-up. 

Wildflower, their long-awaited 2016 sophomore record, was imagined as the dreamy soundtrack to a "road trip on LSD" – this time drawing sampling inspiration from 1960s psychedelic music steeped in themes of anti-establishment and counterculture. We Will Always Love You, arriving four years later in 2020, explored "the vibrational relationship between light, sound and spirit," a theme reflected in a gentler pace of song and an abiding fascination with the human voice.

Now, after another six-year wait, on the 16th October 2026, the Aussie trio return with their fourth studio album, No Bad Memories, inspired by the simultaneously magical and insidious ways that advertising and name-brand technology wrap themselves around our memories. It’s an ambivalent ode to the nostalgic pull of commercial jingles, proprietary start-up sounds and long-forgotten audio logos. 

Sitting with a glass of iced water on a sunny day in Barcelona, I join Chater and Di Blasi over Zoom; on their end, a damp and windy London looms outside the window. As we settle in to discuss their new record, a prompt about the initial spark behind No Bad Memories leads the pair to unpack its underlying themes quickly. 

“We started thinking more about our own memories and lives as consumers,” Chater explains. “The advertising we consume, and how that shapes both our self-perception and the memories we carry.” And whilst it may have been more than half a decade since their last release, No Bad Memories is the culmination of years of work, experimentation and refinement. “We’re constantly working on music, but after four years, you reach a point where you have to bring it all together and turn it into an album”, Di Blasi adds. 

For this project, though, that work isn’t just a standalone album, with No Bad Memories accompanied by a 35-minute film co-directed with Jonathan Zawada, which follows a character who confuses personal memories with advertisement and becomes increasingly disoriented before taking refuge by climbing into a giant iPod which has appeared, monolith-like, inside his apartment. 

“[Both ideas] formed together as one, with album music being written for a film,” Chater explains. “We made a bunch of stuff, and then it was lovely to do this great big project and figure out, this is album music, this is film music. In the film, the character begins to misrepresent his own life through the advertising he’s consumed along the way - unable to tell the difference between his own memories and the ads he’s seen. It felt like a really fun and strong idea to pursue alongside the album.”

There is little doubt that modern life can feel increasingly sterile and dehumanised – consumed as we are by technology, rarely for the better. Yet on No Bad Memories, The Avalanches offer an alternative, repurposing obsolete hardware and stripping sounds back to vintage startup chimes and hard-drive hums to breathe unexpected human warmth back into the digital realm. This concept anchors the entire 31-track record, drawing its title from a 1976 advertising slogan for a five-inch floppy disk.

“Everybody can relate to advertising,” Chater says. “It’s a very human experience about the way we interact with the world, the way we’re all on our phones and bombarded by so much. Exploring these topics is something everyone can relate to, so it feels very human and connects with us.”

“Especially the floppy disk,” Di Blasi adds. “Because we started with sampling, the sound of that loading is very evocative for us, too.”

That mention of their origins brings to mind an interview the pair gave many years ago with Radio Milwaukee, where Chater described sampling as a form of magic, notably an incredible way for people with no money to bring high-quality sound and vivid ideas to life. Asked whether that process still infatuated them as much as it first did, or if the reality of commercial release and industrial clearing procedures blunts the magic at all: 

“Tony and I will still talk about how much we love the magic of sampling,” Chater reflects “But even though we’ve just finished this album, clearing the samples was a hugely frustrating process - expensive and long. By the end, we thought 'never again,' but now, already, I’m excited to sample again and make new music. It’s something that once it grabs you, it’s got you for life.”

“You try to get away from it, but it’s just one of those things that pulls you back,” Di Blasi agrees. “Because it is so much more difficult to clear samples, it can take years. Any sane person would likely say, 'Let’s maybe not do this next one.' But we love doing it that way, and that’s always been us.”

There is a burgeoning, deep love for the art form that shines through not only our conversation, but the album’s stacked collaboration list, which seamlessly bridges generations by uniting electronic legends with today’s most exciting talent. A lifelong passion to their craft has taken them into the orbits of their biggest heroes, with a recent trip to Japan to meet technopop pioneer and Yellow Magic Orchestra founder Haruomi Hosono culminating in a series of sketches sent across by him that were subsequently built up for No Bad Memories. 

“It was such an honour to meet him. We actually went out to his ancestral home where he was born and lives now with his kids and grandkids,” Di Blasi recalls warmly. “It has such a special energy. We did an interview for his radio show, but just even to meet him was obviously such an honour. We got invited to his 80th birthday party dinner that night, so it was a bit of a whirlwind to have an amazing dinner with this absolute legend we adore. There were only about fifteen, twenty people? It was just a lovely, warm atmosphere.”

Alongside legendary influences, No Bad Memories is rich with contemporary modern legends who share their deep reverence for sampling. Among them is Jamie xx, whose track "Every Single Weekend" migrated over to the album after originating in the sessions for his own record, In Waves.

“That was just amazing for us; it was really so cool,” Chater says. “Jamie samples so well in a modern context - those tracks were all made during his In Waves sessions. We were just lucky that he only used a bit of “Every Single Weekend” for an interlude and the outro for his album. The rest of the track was remaining, and we obviously loved it, so we thought, 'Let’s work on this and get this on our record.'”

A collaboration with Portraits Of Tracy on “Can’t Get Over Losing You” is another undeniable highlight of the project. “She’s such an amazing human being – that song is one of my favourites too”, Di Blasi notes, adding that her “vocal performance is just out of this world”.

The full record features thirteen guest artists, including Scottish electronic music producer, DJ, and BRIT nominee Barry Can’t Swim (Josh Mainnie), whose acclaimed debut When Will We Land? was shortlisted for the 2024 Mercury Music Prize, who appears on two tracks. 

“We’re big fans of Josh,” Chater says. “It’s quite rare for that level of talent to be able to use samples in the way that he does, really bringing the emotion out of them and not using random samples for the sake of it. He knows how to write proper, beautiful songs with samples. Because that’s our craft and what we’ve done for so long, we can really hear and admire that. We just think he’s one of the best at it.”

The collaborations arose naturally, with their friendship developing long before music came into the equation. “We were talking about other things before, becoming friends and chatting,” he adds. “He was actually giving us advice about moving to London, and now we live just around the corner from him and see him all the time.”

No Bad Memories is meticulously structured, with interludes grounded in retro technology samples that leave you feeling fully embedded in its world. Unsurprisingly, the conversation turns to the challenge of sequencing a 31-song tracklist to construct such an immersive experience.

“That’s a Tony question,” Chater quickly comments. Di Blasi lets out a small laugh. “Yes… it did take a while. There’s a lot of writing leading up to those four years, and then the task of sequencing it all together does take years to do. It’s like a little jigsaw puzzle that you don’t know the final picture of, so you don’t quite know where the pieces go, and it’s a lot of experimentation to try and get it right. So yeah, it does take a lot of time, but it’s fun.”

With that puzzle now solved and No Bad Memories set to be released into the world, taking it to the stage is the next step. In November, The Avalanches will return to Camden for two special, sold-out headline shows at The Roundhouse, just a ten-minute walk from the Electric Ballroom, where the band played their first London live shows some twenty-five years ago in August 2001. 

While the first show, listed as part of Pitchfork London Festival, is partially framed as a return, the pair have actually relocated to London in recent months, bringing their journey full circle. “It does feel like a return, and it feels like a big deal for us. Both those shows sold out, and that was really emotional for us,” Chater explains. “London has always been this place that made Since I Left You first explode - it was Britain that took that album to their hearts and changed our lives. We were really young, and we made that album thinking no one would really ever hear it or care, and then it became this thing in London that changed the course of our lives forever.”

“It’s so special living here, and the energy of London we love,” Di Blasi continues. “We’ve only lived here for a few months, but it does feel like a big homecoming. These shows - we’ve got some amazing ideas and things for people in the scene. We’re pumped for it.”

With a busy few months ahead, and their latest record finally out in the world, it feels customary to end on asking how The Avalanches hope such a conceptually-rich project will be perceived. 

“If people want to reflect on our place in the world as consumers, and how we interact in this crazy, late-stage capitalist world, those are all good things to think about,” Chater says, with Di Blasi firmly in agreement. “But ultimately, the music is about connection – connecting to people, and bringing positivity and joy. That’s what we’ve always wanted to do with all our albums. 

We want the listener to love it for what it is, without needing to know any of the concepts behind it - to feel the joy the music brings”.