Since the sudden dissolution of Air France last month, I've more or less pinned my comeback album of the decade hopes on The Avalanches, whose followup to 2000's sampling masterpiece Since I Left You was first teased here four years ago but increasingly feels just on the horizon. The mix was posted to their Twitter earlier this week, where the group also confirmed a song with Danny Brown and Jonti. It's entitled "Sleepy Bedtime Mix for Young Ones" and attributed to the recurring Charles Bukowski protagonist Henry Chinaski, lingering around an intangible, Avalanchey tone full of deep vinyl cracks, the soft hum of warm recording and unfamiliar renditions of classic songs from the ’60s. It features dialogue from Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep ("This is not Duke Ellington. This is Duck Ellington"), the late-’70s jazz-pop of The Free Design and a number of bossa nova songs I've embarrassingly mostly only heard Frank Sinatra sing—"My Funny Valentine," "More (Theme from Mondo Cane)," "Meditation (Meditacao)." There's a softer rendition of a Chic song leading to an incredible folk section—actually, talking about this feels like spoiling the surprise. It goes everywhere, sets up everything, and hopefully, not too far from now, will turn it all into something new.
