The Avalanches Test Our Patience With Another Fucking Album Tease

For the past 15-and-a-half years, the world has been waiting eagerly for a follow-up to Since I Left You, the debut full-length from Australian electronic outfit The Avalanches.

For the past decade — since a rep at then-label Modular Recordings described the long-rumoured sophomore album as "everything we dared not hope for, and so much more" — that sense of excitement and anticipation has only grown year-on-year, stoked intermittently as it has been by repeat references and reassurances from band members and their inner circle.

As a new video posted to the band's Facebook page recounts, over the past several years, we've heard about how it's been "a really thrilling time … as this record comes together" (2007), and even that it was definitely destined for release in October 2010 (triple j, later retracted). In 2014, they'd apparently spent "three or four months" mixing it. But, even now, after at least four or five teases in the past two years, let alone the decade preceding — even with confirmed collaborations from Ariel Pink, Danny Brown, Jennifer Herrema and others — they still can't commit to a release date. So a caption at the end of the video, asserting the album is "coming soon… hopefully", really comes off as more frustrating than cute at this advent.

Don't misunderstand — it's excellent news that the band is back in action. Since I Left You is a demonstrably influential and culturally important record, and its impact, intelligence, craftsmanship and significance are not being called into question here.

Indeed, it's just as exciting that thirsty fans will have the chance to be sated with performances at local and international festivals alike, including the upcoming Splendour In The Grass event in Byron Bay, as well as Spain's Primavera Sound and the UK's Field Day festivals.

Equally, there's no rushing genius — art takes as long as art takes, and that's a more-than fair-enough assertion. Certainly, there's no intention here to tell anyone how, or how quickly, they should be making their art.

But do you know what the rest of the world has accomplished in the time it has taken The Avalanches to get this electro-Chinese Democracy off the ground? The planet isn't even recognisable as the same place that Since I Left You was born into. Aside from being a post-9/11 world, now we have hybrid cars. Segways. iPods. iPads. The whole iProduct kingdom. Twitter. YouTube. HDTV. Kindles. Game Of Thrones. God, we've seen three different Olympic Games since there was last a new Avalanches album to speak of, and maybe we'll take it to a fourth if that "...hopefully" has more weight to it than we think.

And if that's the case — if there's even a chance this album won't be released this year, given all that's happened on the road to this point — then releasing videos like this, which seem specifically designed to a) make us remember how long we've been hanging out for this thing already and b) reel us in with the potential promise of maybe finding out something new and concrete but not offering as much, really just seems mean-spirited.

Come on. We're beyond being teased about this. Release it or don't. Just make up your minds, because, at best, this entire shtick is getting old; at worst, it's cynically trading on the goodwill of people who have, in good faith, lent their support to this band every time they've ultimately cried wolf in the past couple decades — so, yes, "hopefully", they can show us a luscious pelt some time soon before the end result is inevitably diminished and consumed by its own hype.