In June the musical King Kong will come to life in at The Regent Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, and with it new music from The Avalanches, Justice, Massive Attack and more.
This will likely serve as a sort of reprieve for fans of The Avalanches, who have been waiting for close to 8 years for the group’s sophomore album. Talk of this second album began in 2005, when the band announced they had turned the record’s initial ambient world music idea into more of a party sound.
Hints of the album’s release followed for years to come, then in late 2011, The Avalanches posted the lyrics to a new song, “The Stepkids”, on their Twitter, but declined to release word of the pending album’s title or release date. In 2012, artists Jennifer Herrema, Danny Brown and Ariel Pink were revealed to be collaborating with them for the new record, and in August of that year a demo to the track “A Cowboy Overflow of the Heart”, featuring Silver Jews member David Berman, was released.
Currently the band’s website is “taking a break”, so estimates on the new album’s time frame are anyone’s guess. For the time being, one can at least enjoy a concrete piece of new work from The Avalanches, thanks to the King Kong musical.
Enjoy samples of a few of the songs featured below, especially that of The Avalanches cover of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Get Happy”, at the 1:55 mark.
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