Avalanches, The Vinyl Records
The Avalanches are bent on filtering their all-encompassing record collections through sampling and original instrumentation that owes most to hip-hop. The Australian group truly arrived in 2000 with Since I Left You. An expansive suite in the lineage of sample-based landmarks such as Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, and DJ Shadow's Endtroducing....., the album distinguished itself with an unbridled sense of joy - exemplified not only by the sound of whinnying horses - and minimal original vocal content, left to ingeniously recontextualized voices from disparate sources.