The Avalanches have shared new single ‘Together’, featuring LA-based producer Nikki Nair, Canadian dance-pop experimentalist Jessy Lanza and viral teenage sensation Prentiss, out now.
The track is built from layered samples and electronic melodies, dreamlike in texture and emotionally direct in a way that recalls the best moments of Since I Left You and We Will Always Love You. Pitchfork has described the result as sounding like the stuttering but pleasant memories of a floppy disk over a dance beat, with the lyric at its emotional centre arriving in the song’s second half: “Staring at a picture on my phone / Staring at a memory that’s old.”
The video, directed and animated by Jonathan Zawada, depicts an iPod and a computer disc walking together through a digital landscape. It marks the first time Apple has permitted one of its products to be anthropomorphised in this way, a significant creative clearance that speaks to the scale of The Avalanches’ reputation.
The release arrives alongside a characteristically cryptic campaign. Since last autumn the Australian trio of Robbie Chater, Tony Di Blasi and Andy Szekeres have been building anticipation through a fictional company called Takumi Archives, a retro-futuristic retro-futuristic role-playing game that asks visitors a series of strange questions before revealing a digital preservation pitch. The press release for the single is styled as Takumi marketing copy. All of it is pointing, with considerable confidence, towards a new album.
We Will Always Love You was released in 2020. The wait, on the evidence of ‘Together’, has been worthwhile.
