I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.
Go to 93: Transmission by Joy Division
Go to 95: Dead End Street by The Kinks
By the start of the new millennium sampling had become an accepted part of mainstream music. Perhaps so accepted that it had ceased to be seen as something inventive, something interesting, something worth the price of an official licensing fee.
With people like Puff Daddy shelling out cash to sample well-known songs like The Police’s Every Breath You Take or Led Zepplin’s Kashmir and doing nothing with them other than lay his monotone vocals on top, sampling began to be seen as the preserve of fraudsters and the indolent.
Sure, DJ Shadow had deposited gems from his record collection on Entroducing and become an underground sensation. But that was a serious, moody record for dark, smoky rooms. Where was the new Double Dee & Steinski? The crate diggers with a sense of humour, who wanted to light up a room with fun party records?
The unlikely answer was Melbourne, Australia where musicians Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann had formed an electronic pop group called Avalanches. The pair had started out in a punk band called Alarm 115, buying their instruments and equipment from second hand shops. They also began amassing a serious vinyl collection from their bargain store trips and these records were to become the key to their future sound as the duo became progressively influenced by both hip-hop and surf rock.
By 1998, additional members had come on board and the group were recording as Avalanches. A seven-track EP called El Producto caught the attention of new Australian label Modular, who signed the band and sat back to await the result of album recording sessions. They would wait for nearly two years, which is hardly surprising since Avalanches’ debut album Since I Left You is a tightly crafted assortment of more than 3,500 samples lifted from Chater and Seltmann’s extensive record collection.
That kind of shit takes time, but the wait was truly worthwhile. Since I Left You is jaw dropping, ass-shaking party music that veers from the sweet soul of its title track to the foot-stomping funk of Electricity. But there is one track that is beyond all classification, that exists in a singular genre called “what the fuck was that?”
Frontier Psychiatrist starts with the thump of hooves, a military horn and the whine of a horse, before a speeded-up vocal sample from the John Waters movie Polyester describes a truant schoolboy named Dexter who is deemed to be “criminally insane”. A super slick breakbeat paves the way for the first of the song’s great hooks—a three-note horn blast that’s like a punch in the face and a deliriously spooky choir, hilariously portrayed as ghosts in the song’s excellent promo video.
Both the horn and vocal are lifted from the same record: My Way of Life by Enoch Light Singers. That song was originally made famous by Frank Sinatra and written by German composers Bert Kaempfert and Herbert Rehbein—who get official songwriter credit on Frontier Psychiatrist. But true kudos must go to experimental producer Enoch Light whose astonishing choral version is given a new, even better life by Avalanches.
Frontier Psychiatrist’s second great hook comes from an even more obscure source: a sketch by Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster. A mainstay of Canadian television since the 1950s, the duo found unlikely fans on the other side of the world and samples from their sketches are scattered liberally throughout Since I Left You. On Frontier Psychiatrist, Chater and Seltmann use a vocal sample from a sketch of the same name. The hypnotically memorable line “that boy needs therapy” is cut and looped with another word from the same clip—“psychosomatic”—while that breakbeat continues to thump. It’s almost impossible to get it out of your head once you hear it (and voices in your head only lead to one thing).
And that’s just the first minute. The remaining four are jam-packed with countless amusing and interesting samples, an addictive string loop, a record scratched to sound like a parrot and the sweetest Latin guitar riff that plays out as the song rides off into the sunset.
Discovering all the different samples used in the song is thankfully a task undertaken by the person who compiled this excellent YouTube video or by looking the song up on WhoSampled. It’s astounding to see the breathe and variety of samples used, whether it’s the strings from the soundtrack to Lawrence of Arabia that float behind the intro, or the myriad sources for the mass of vocal cuts that mash-up in the song’s mid-section.
But ultimately that is too much of a reductionist way to view a track that has been so brilliantly conceived as a coherent piece of what-the-fuck-was-that? music. Frontier Psychiatrist may be the product of samples from other people’s records, but it is one of the most original songs ever created. Meanwhile, the 12-year wait for Avalanches' album number two continues.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try:
Since I Left You
Radio
Electricity
My Way of Life - Enoch Light Singers
Go to 93: Transmission by Joy Division
Go to 95: Dead End Street by The Kinks
Go to 93: Transmission by Joy Division
Go to 95: Dead End Street by The Kinks
By the start of the new millennium sampling had become an accepted part of mainstream music. Perhaps so accepted that it had ceased to be seen as something inventive, something interesting, something worth the price of an official licensing fee.
With people like Puff Daddy shelling out cash to sample well-known songs like The Police’s Every Breath You Take or Led Zepplin’s Kashmir and doing nothing with them other than lay his monotone vocals on top, sampling began to be seen as the preserve of fraudsters and the indolent.
Sure, DJ Shadow had deposited gems from his record collection on Entroducing and become an underground sensation. But that was a serious, moody record for dark, smoky rooms. Where was the new Double Dee & Steinski? The crate diggers with a sense of humour, who wanted to light up a room with fun party records?
The unlikely answer was Melbourne, Australia where musicians Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann had formed an electronic pop group called Avalanches. The pair had started out in a punk band called Alarm 115, buying their instruments and equipment from second hand shops. They also began amassing a serious vinyl collection from their bargain store trips and these records were to become the key to their future sound as the duo became progressively influenced by both hip-hop and surf rock.
By 1998, additional members had come on board and the group were recording as Avalanches. A seven-track EP called El Producto caught the attention of new Australian label Modular, who signed the band and sat back to await the result of album recording sessions. They would wait for nearly two years, which is hardly surprising since Avalanches’ debut album Since I Left You is a tightly crafted assortment of more than 3,500 samples lifted from Chater and Seltmann’s extensive record collection.
That kind of shit takes time, but the wait was truly worthwhile. Since I Left You is jaw dropping, ass-shaking party music that veers from the sweet soul of its title track to the foot-stomping funk of Electricity. But there is one track that is beyond all classification, that exists in a singular genre called “what the fuck was that?”
Frontier Psychiatrist starts with the thump of hooves, a military horn and the whine of a horse, before a speeded-up vocal sample from the John Waters movie Polyester describes a truant schoolboy named Dexter who is deemed to be “criminally insane”. A super slick breakbeat paves the way for the first of the song’s great hooks—a three-note horn blast that’s like a punch in the face and a deliriously spooky choir, hilariously portrayed as ghosts in the song’s excellent promo video.
Both the horn and vocal are lifted from the same record: My Way of Life by Enoch Light Singers. That song was originally made famous by Frank Sinatra and written by German composers Bert Kaempfert and Herbert Rehbein—who get official songwriter credit on Frontier Psychiatrist. But true kudos must go to experimental producer Enoch Light whose astonishing choral version is given a new, even better life by Avalanches.
Frontier Psychiatrist’s second great hook comes from an even more obscure source: a sketch by Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster. A mainstay of Canadian television since the 1950s, the duo found unlikely fans on the other side of the world and samples from their sketches are scattered liberally throughout Since I Left You. On Frontier Psychiatrist, Chater and Seltmann use a vocal sample from a sketch of the same name. The hypnotically memorable line “that boy needs therapy” is cut and looped with another word from the same clip—“psychosomatic”—while that breakbeat continues to thump. It’s almost impossible to get it out of your head once you hear it (and voices in your head only lead to one thing).
And that’s just the first minute. The remaining four are jam-packed with countless amusing and interesting samples, an addictive string loop, a record scratched to sound like a parrot and the sweetest Latin guitar riff that plays out as the song rides off into the sunset.
Discovering all the different samples used in the song is thankfully a task undertaken by the person who compiled this excellent YouTube video or by looking the song up on WhoSampled. It’s astounding to see the breathe and variety of samples used, whether it’s the strings from the soundtrack to Lawrence of Arabia that float behind the intro, or the myriad sources for the mass of vocal cuts that mash-up in the song’s mid-section.
But ultimately that is too much of a reductionist way to view a track that has been so brilliantly conceived as a coherent piece of what-the-fuck-was-that? music. Frontier Psychiatrist may be the product of samples from other people’s records, but it is one of the most original songs ever created. Meanwhile, the 12-year wait for Avalanches' album number two continues.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try:
Since I Left You
Radio
Electricity
My Way of Life - Enoch Light Singers
Go to 93: Transmission by Joy Division
Go to 95: Dead End Street by The Kinks
Hey there, just wanted to say that thanks for all your posts -- I remember seeing this in 2012 (when the internet somehow felt smaller and more accessible) and being introduced to what to this day remains a favorite song!
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