‘Spend time going down rabbit holes’: how the Avalanches created their wildest album yet

The Aussie trio explain creating their new record sampling kids’ science shows and Tunisian music – and their surreal film with Haley Joel Osment Last December, Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, the core members of the Aussie disco-pop collagists the Avalanches , found themselves winding through the frosty, mountainous region of Minakami, Japan, with Haley Joel Osment .

The pair’s lauded debut album, 2000’s Since I Left You , has become a touchstone in plunderphonics – a genre known for its innovative use of samples – and in the years since its release, the group have amassed an ardent cult following.

Osment, the former child star of The Sixth Sense and Forrest Gump , seemed to count himself among their devotees, frequently liking their posts on Instagram, so they decided to reach out and ask him to board their latest project: a 35-minute movie that would accompany their new LP, No Bad Memories.

“We’d never made a film before, so it was like, ‘This could be a complete disaster for him,’” recalls Di Blasi, who is dressed in a black tee and purple cap with the logo for the cult electronic label трип when we meet in Manhattan in mid-September.

“We were like, ‘We don’t really have anyone yet … We don’t even know what we’re doing.’” To their surprise, Osment signed on.

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