The Avalanches - WILDFLOWER (2LP) ((Vinyl))

The Avalanches' 2000 album Since I Left You is an undisputed classic of sample-based electronic music. Melding soft rock, sunshine pop, hip-hop, house, ambient, and a thousand other things, while mashing together an alleged 1,500 samples, give or take a few hundred, from sources near and far, it's a listening experience like no other. Nobody else has ever come close to creating anything quite like it, including the band itself. It took over 15 years for a follow-up to appear, but in mid-2016 they released Wildflower on Astralwerks/XL. Unlike Since I Left You, this is a star-studded affair featuring guest appearances from Father John Misty, Toro y Moi, Danny Brown, MF Doom, Jennifer Herrema, and Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue. The presence of real live humans doesn't mean that the group eschewed the use of samples; they are as prominent as ever over the course of the album's long, 21-track running time. ~ Tim Sendra

• RSD Release Date: n/a
• Genre: Pop