Radio 1's Classic Essential Mix - The Avalanches

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Radio 1's Classic Essential Mix: The Avalanches

The Avalanches

BBC Radio 1 - Radio 1's Classic Essential Mix, The Avalanches

Relive a genius Essential Mix from 2016 by The Avalanches.

Relive a genius Essential Mix from 2016 by The Avalanches, a mix they described as one of the best they'd ever done.
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"Of all our DJ sets over the years, the 2016 BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix is close to our hearts.

A compilation of homemade music, street recordings and long forgotten pieces of musical flotsam and jetsam, the mix celebrates every musical maverick who never gave a damn what anyone else thought. Such spirit! Such firebrand energy! Such beauty! We tried to capture it all in one mix.

Our journey begins with a 1950 home recording from somniloquist Dion McGregor, a sleep talker who would often narrate his dreams at conversational volume. As narrator of his own terrifying dream journeys, Dion adopted various personas and frequently established an insolent approach to the subject matter at hand - be it a hot air balloon trip to the moon with a group of school children, a game of culinary Russian roulette with poisoned eclairs upon a wildly spinning food wheel, or a journey through a wonderfully tiny 'midget city'. Most of McGregor's dream narratives end with him shrieking in terror as he wakes up. 

Leaving Dion, we meet Moog scientist Mort Garson and his electronic 'Symphony for a Spider Plant’, the Temple City Cazoo Orchestra, electronic pioneer Bruce Haack and the homemade punk-funk of 14 y/o Chandra, (who we sampled 30 years later on ‘Subways’). We detour via the street recordings of Moondog (‘the viking of 7th avenue’) and other traveller musicians; Larry ‘Wild Man' Fischer's riotous recordings from the streets of 1970's L.A are all-time favorite, before reuniting with better known mavericks Sun Ra, Yoko Ono and The Slits.

We wanted to celebrate the little things with this mix, the beauty in the unnoticed and overlooked, the magic and wonder from the other side of life. This mix is our love letter to that world long lost. Peace." The Avalanches

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