The Avalanches - GIMIX Mix (2000)

The Avalanches are one of my favorite bands of all time. I discovered them as a brand new college radio DJ when someone called during my graveyard DJ shift and requested one of their songs. The depth and texture they brought to their sample-heavy disco blew my young mind and I’ve been a fan ever since.

This mix was created as the Avalanches readied their legendary debut album, Since I Left You, which took forever to release due to the sheer volume of sample clearances. While they couldn’t release the album, they toured radio stations and concert festivals with different cuts of this mixtape, which combines many of the tracks from their album with dozens of pop hits and deep cuts from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.

The video embedded above has been edited to remove some of the bigger tracks on the mix (Bob Dylan and the Beatles, for instance) but it also includes a mediafire link to the whole thing—which I highly recommend you give a listen to. It’s not safe for work (mostly thanks to a Detroit Grand Poobahs track, Blowfly’s Rapp Dirty, and a classic ODB cut) but it’s a fantastic, enduring, and seamless mix of turn-of-the-century joy.