/MUSIC BETTER LATE THAN NEVER...

IF The Avalanches had their own stubborn way, they would probably not be headlining the Albert Hall tonight in front of hundreds of delighted Mancunian music fans. Rather, the Australian band would most likely still be locked away in their Melbourne studio. Despite spending over a decade working on their second album, Wildflower – the follow-up to their era-defining 2000 debut Since I Left You – the acclaimed electronic outfit, perfectionists to the extreme, still felt there was work to be done on the album which was finally released last summer. It was only the pressure of a deadline, as they were about to board a flight to New York to master the album, that the band realised their perfectionist streak was becoming a real obstacle to progress.

Band member Tony Di Blasi recalls of that epochal morning: “At 6am in the morning, we were like, ‘Well, that has to be it.’ And that was when the record was over. After all those years, we were still tweaking until we had to get on a plane to go master. We should have been excited but there was no big victory. No big high-five. We could have tweaked for years. We could still be doing it now.”

With perhaps, say, the exceptions of Guns N’ Roses and that long-awaited Stone Roses third LP, it’s hard to imagine a more protracted album gestation than The Avalanches and their long, arduous road to completing their second album.

Of course, as the story goes with any ‘difficult second album,’ the main problem begins with figuring out to build upon the success of the first – and, in the case of The Avalanches, what an unforgettable first album theirs was.

Back in 2000, a time before social media, selfie sticks and the Kardashians, the Melbourne knobtwiddlers released their debut LP, Since I Left You, a collection of songs which stitched together myriad samples of forgotten vinyl (a rumoured 3, 500 snippets) to create a modern electronic dance classic. The album became a massive international success, both critically and commercially – only for the band to promptly disappeared from sight.

In the 16 years since, The Avalanches have endured all manner of personal and professional setbacks: false starts, financial meltdowns, serious illness (Robbie Chater was diagnosed with autoimmune disease), the departure of band members and the collapse of their record label Modular.

Given that troubled gestation – and, of course, the band’s intense pursuit for perfectionism – it’s nothing short of miraculous that Wildflower, finally released last year, turned out such a resounding triumph. The album’s delirious, psychedelic-heavy feel-good vibes (enhanced by a host of guest stars including Father John Misty, Jennifer Herrema,