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First Taste Of New Avalanches Material Revealed In King Kong Sampler

Plus new material from Justice, Sarah McLachlan and members of Massive Attack and Elbow.

The Avalanches in 2005
The Avalanches in 2005
More The Avalanches The Avalanches

With the mammoth King Kong stage show set to premiere in around five weeks' time, a short sampler that features eight tracks from the show has been released tonight.

Listen to it here!

New music from Justice, Massive Attack's 3D, Elbow's Guy Garvey and Sarah McLachlan are all featured in the sampler, but most exciting is a taste of new work from Australian reclusive cut and paste geniuses The Avalanches. Well, it's kinda new.

The Avalanches' sample is of the old Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler song Get Happy, it's only 25 seconds long but reveals the band have sampled famed 19th Century Roman composer Giuseppe Verdi's interpretation of Dies Irae. It sounds pretty awesome (it kicks in at 1min 55sec mark if you're in a rush).

When news of the musical's soundtrack first hit last year, CEO of Global Creatures Carmen Pavlovic expressed how thrilled she was with the artist who had come onboard to soundtrack the production. Her brother, Modular's Stephen Pavlovic, is one of the show's consultants.

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“I am so excited to have such distinctive and original artists joining us on this musical adventure – they represent our original vision for a score that would travel through genre and time in a way that is contemporary and, I hope, redefining,” Carmen Pavolic said.

King Kong will premiere Saturday 15 June for an exclusive run at Regent Theatre in Melbourne.