Australian electronic music act The Avalanches have announced their first album of new material in 16 years, with their long-awaited second record Wildflower coming out on July 8th.

National broadcaster Triple J also premiered the group’s brand new single ‘Frankie Sinatra’, with a music video uploaded online just moments before the track was given its radio debut.

The Avalanches have been promising a follow-up to their groundbreaking 2000 album Since I Left You for over a decade and a half, with updates coming extremely infrequently and shrouded in mystery. That debut was one of the most well-received albums of the noughties, making countless end-of-decade best-of lists and generally hailed as a masterpiece with its kaleidoscopic, patchwork approach to sampling.

The AvalanchesThe Avalanches' Tony Di Blasi, Robbie Chater and James Dela Cruz

Revealing the long-awaited release in an interview with Beats 1 radio host Zane Lowe on Thursday (June 2nd), two of the group’s five members Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi revealed that there were many occasions when they themselves thought a second album might never happen. “Having new tunes to play – that’s a really special thing,” they said.

The new track, ‘Frankie Sinatra’, which features MF Doom and Danny Brown and features a snatched sample from The Sound of Music, was apparently the hardest track to complete, taking them an astonishing two years to complete mixing from more than 100 reference mixes.

Wildflower will consist of 21 tracks, with other guest stars including Camp Lo, Warren Ellis, Biz Markie, Jennifer Herrema, Toro y Moi, Father John Misty and Jonathan Donahue (from Mercury Rev). The wealth of music they had was such that a much-vaunted collaboration with Empire Of The Sun’s Luke Steele had to be scrapped, as they admitted they “ran out of time”.

Last month, the Australians sent their fans into a frenzy by changing the artwork on their social media accounts to an image of an embroidered butterfly, indicating that their long wait might finally be over. Shortly after that, they announced a small handful of festival dates in Australia, Spain and England this summer, representing their first live appearances in 15 years.

Well, once the promotional cycle is over, there’s the prospect of waiting until 2032 for a third album. However, Chater and Di Blasi assured listeners to the Beats 1 show that another full record will only take three years. Don’t hold your breath, though…

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