Music Monday: Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches

Music Monday: Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches

Back in the early 2000s through 2010, a few new genres of music became popular. They all had one thing in common: sampling. With the rise of YouTube, people began producing mash ups based on samples from TV or movies. Think of artists like Swedemason, Pogo, Placeboing, and Steve Porter. While sampling has always been a thing in music, using only samples to build a song was much harder in the past. Now that technology allows you to do it in your own home, it is far easier; what took months now takes hours. Hell, you can even self publish now and don’t even need a record label.

If you’re curious about the origins of this style, they stretch back from the 1960s to the 1980s. Rock, electronic, and hip hop have all used samples, and there have even been famous copyright cases because of it. The song I want to share today is what can be called Plunderphonics, though you could also class it as Sampledelia or Turntablism.

So, what better song to talk about than “Frontier Psychiatrist” by The Avalanches, an Australian group that mastered this craft. Originally recorded back in 1999 or 2000 during the early stages of the digital age, it took months of sourcing samples and finding records to mix into the track and the resulting album. It was never really planned; the artists were just messing around before finding the bones of this song.

The dialogue comes from a 1950s comedy sketch by Wayne and Shuster, but you can also hear the orchestral sample of “My Way of Life” by the Enno Light Singers all over the track. Scratching can be found throughout, along with samples from comedy movies including Polyester and plenty of uncredited gems. Only three samples are officially credited, but I had to look them up because I was curious. It’s impressive and funny at the same time. I really should listen to the full album it comes from, Since I Left You.

The music video reenacts the samples, and honestly, it looks exactly how the song sounds. Weird is putting it lightly. It’s a collage of madness.

I have always been a fan of experimental and progressive music, so this felt like a natural endpoint for the month. Given that March is all about “Madness,” this song is quite mad itself. It has been quite a journey going from Thrash Metal to Electronic Rock, then Soul/Pop, and finally ending with this Hip Hop/Sampledelia mix. It’s a bit of a wildcard, but madness is about being a bit wild, really.

Hope you have enjoyed my musical journey I have started in February and carried into March. Going back to my roots seeking out new music, really.