The Avalanches have been teasing a new album, their first since 2020’s We Will Always Love You. The record doesn’t have a release date or even a title attached to it yet, but here’s everything we know so far.
When did the Avalanches start dropping hints of a new album?
The first teaser came just a year after the release of their last album, with the band writing “Album #4” on Facebook and checking in at “Planet Earth.” They took to social media to hint at the album again in 2023, posting, “What do you imagine the next Avalanches album to sound like?”
The teasers started feeling more concrete last fall, when the group shared a photo of a pile of LaCie Rugged drives. More recently, they revealed a new logo on Instagram after wiping their profile clean. And now, as Stereogum reports, they’re rolling out the album via a fictional company called Takumi, whose mascot is a purple cat flying around on a broomstick. An animated ad promoting it first appeared on platforms including Spotify and YouTube before surfacing on the Takumi Digital Archives Instagram. All the way back in December, the Avalanches shared photos of actor Haley Joel Osment wearing a uniform that featured the Takumi logo.
What does Takumi do?
The company offers clients the opportunity to upload their memories, particularly of old commercials. “Our new TAKUMI data centre is now operational,” reads the caption on one post. “The 155,000ft fault tolerant facility comprises 1,800 computing cores, three petabytes of high-density racks and 36 superchips with low-latency networking. A world first in Non-Volatile storage solutions. At Takumi, your memories are safe with us.”
There’s also an accompanying website full of fake vintage magazine covers and retro ads, which might be hinting at song titles. Adding to the nostalgic aesthetic are images of CDs, cassettes, floppy disks, VHS, and USB drives. There are also prompts like “I remember… we were at the club?” and other text that could be glimpses of song lyrics.
Besides the Takumi business, have there been other hints of new music?
In March, a music video for ‘Every Single Weekend’ was shot, but it’s unclear whether it’s going to be part of the new album rollout. ‘Every Single Weekend’ was an Avalanches-assisted interlude on Jamie xx’s latest album In Waves, which came out two years ago. But it’s interesting that the casting call seeks “female talent in their 20s” to “play our ‘El Dorado Girl’,” alluding to the fictional beverage that shows up on the Takumi website.
This post will be updated…
