Avalanche Party: ‘With ‘The Noise Between Us’, we liked it straight away – it had a very different feeling to anything else we had on the album’

North Yorkshire’s Avalanche Party have released their second album, Der Traum Über Alles – “the dream above all else” – a rush of whirring, explosive New Wave thrills, thick bass lines and the kind of propulsive, punky energy that is set to make it one of the most exciting albums of the year.

Formed in 2016, Avalanche Party comprises Jordan Bell (vocals/guitar), his older brother Joe (bass/vocals), Jared Thorpe (guitar/sax/vocals), Glen Adkins (keys) and Kane Waterfield (drums). Hailing from different corners of North Yorkshire, the band was formed by the brothers Bell, who met the others on the local music scene. Brought up on a farm on the sprawling moors, they were home-schooled by their parents and initiated into the counterculture by their father Pete, who in the late 1960’s was resident bassist at Beckenham Arts Lab in London, playing alongside Bowie, among others.

Their band name comes courtesy of his brother, according to Jordan Bell: ‘It’s one of those things where you have a round table of suggestions and then that’s the one that’s stuck and no-one quite knows why but then you stay with it for a couple of years and then suddenly it’s: “Well, that’s it, isn’t it?!”‘ I say that it’s very fitting, given that they make an avalanche of noise in the best possible way and he laughs: ‘I think that is where he was coming from.’

”I was watching and learning a lot about David Lynch at the time, one of my favourite filmmakers’

Der Traum Über Alles is a brilliantly diverse album, both sonically and lyrically, leaping from frenetic garage-psych to sedate surrealistic Americana to staccato uplifting indie rock over the course of its thirty-nine minutes. With its poetic yet probing lyrics, it’s a real call-to-arms to set yourself free. The record’s first half feels like a sonic exorcism that shifts from the frenzied New Wave of ‘Nureyev Said it Best’ and ‘Shake the Slack’ to the exhilarating war-drum deliverance of ‘Serious Dance Music’ and ‘Collateral Damage’. The album sledgehammers and seduces in equal measure: the elegant ‘Ecstasy’ has a tenderness that gradually veers into instability while ‘The Noise Between Us’ has all the fatalistic grandeur of Berlin-era Bowie as the band beckons us towards the void: ‘Into the edge, my love, falling overboard.’

The album title has a gritty provenance: during the pandemic, Bell wrote “Der Traum Über Alles” on his left arm in permanent marker every day: Taking inspiration from David Lynch’s book ‘Catching the Big Fish’, the filmmaker’s book of bite-sized ruminations on imagination, meditation and the power of the dream. Bell’s daily tattoo served as a galvanising slogan, a reaffirmation of his dedication to live a defiantly creative life, however precariously, seemingly stuck, in his words, ‘in the arse-end of nowhere’: ‘I was watching and learning a lot about David Lynch at the time, one of my favourite filmmakers,’ he said. ‘I’ve loved his films but I also got into his music and everything else about him. The book goes into his process and the idea of dreams but not typical dreams. He talks in it about imagination and dreaming and how he always puts that first and really pays attention to it and that resonated a lot at the time. ‘A dream above all else’ might even have been a phrase that he used, which sounded good, but it sounded more powerful in German (laughs). It doesn’t sound like you’d find it on a tea towel although it probably would be a good tea towel, we should make that tea towel!’

I ask if he has a favourite film by Lynch: ‘Has to be ‘Wild At Heart’, ‘Lost Highway’ a close second,’ he said. ‘There are so many incredible moments, people generally go to Tarantino when talking about great soundtracks but Lynch had the same thing, that perfect synergy between music and film. ‘Wild At Heart’ has to be the one, mostly down to Nicholas Cage. I watched that film so many times I started dreaming I was in it – not sure I’ve woke up yet!’

‘John Coltrane’s Moscow Skyscraper’ is an inspired opener, underpinned by Bell’s buzzing self-made three-string guitar, talky vocals, lush imagery and heaps of swagger. There’s nothing conventional about its structure, or indeed, that of any the 11 tracks on the album; it’s impossible to predict what comes next as the tracks builds to a wave of noise that would blow the roof off live: ‘We definitely made a conscious effort to do what you’re talking about in terms of our songwriting, in terms of song structures and trying to avoid being too conventional in terms of verse-chorus stuff,’ Bell said. ‘With a lot of music, you know when the vocal is going to come in and you kind of know what’s going to happen next. We were consciously trying to avoid that and also tried to be very careful not to use too many layers. When we brought something in, it had to have an impact, whereas before, I think we’ve maybe gone the other way but it’s quite hard to avoid the temptation to whack three different organs on it because they all sound great!’

‘It felt like we were starting again, that we were ready to get back out into the world’

I ask what the “whooshy’ noise is that serves as the backdrop to the track and it turns out to be an unusual synth: ‘It’s something that was at Rancho (de la Luna, a music studio on the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park in California). It’ll have been one of those things that Dave (Catching, their producer) will have brought out of some cupboard and said: “Why don’t you try this?” The whole process was like that, with Glen maybe saying “Have you got anything that does X?”, and he’s like: “Yes, I’ll get that out of the box!” It was the guitar that started that song off. I was playing a three string guitar, which a lot of the album was written on, in ostrich tuning (like Lou Reed), where all three strings are tuned to the same octave – low C, middle C and high C. We split the guitar into two sections the top string would go out to one amp with one set of effects and the lowest stuff would go to another amp. That song’s in E, so I use a capo. It’s the easiest riff in the world to play because it’s just like open strings!’

Lyrically, the track was inspired by life opening up again after the pandemic: ‘It felt like we were starting again, that we were ready to get back out into the world,’ he said. ‘The over-the-top imagery followed fairly quickly. It was also inspired by walking through Middlesbrough (where he now lives) after studio sessions and that tense environment you can have at that time of the night. There was some nice symmetry there, it felt.’ As the track erupts: “I wanna go to a Moscow club. Drink red wine ’til it stains my blood. Dance Swan Lake really fucking good. I think I’m loosening up. I wanna walk in a storm outside. With a tiger by my side. Find a lion, take its pride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I’m loosening up.”

‘I’d watched a documentary about Nureyev, which was so interesting and so cool’

‘John Coltrane’s Moscow Skyscraper’ is followed by another track referencing ballet, ‘Nureyev Said It Best’, so I ask him whether he’s a big ballet fan: ‘I think that was just on the brain in a similar way to David Lynch,’ he said laughing. ‘I’d watched a documentary about Nureyev, which was so interesting and so cool. Me and Joe, we went to see Swan Lake in Middlesbrough somewhere. I’m not going to say it was an amateur thing but it wasn’t the Swan Lake that we’d signed up for (laughs). It was a great thing to experience but that’s still an itch that we’ll have to scratch at some point!’

‘Nureyev Said It Best’ is one of my favourite songs on the album, opening with what sounds like an air raid siren, before a seriously punchy bass line comes in, accompanied by a strikingly distorted sax. There’s something swampy and delicious about it, it’s impossible to pigeonhole, brilliantly mashing up punk and surf rock as it races along to create something almost eerily apocalyptic. As the track goes: “Dead as a carcass. A washed up whale. Well give them hope, watch them fail. There’s no redemption inside a song. Nureyev did it best because he danced it all night long into the street. To the street.”

Their songwriting process varies hugely, depending on who’s bringing an idea to the table: ‘Coltrane’ was something I had which was pretty full-formed,’ he said. ”Nureyev’ started with Joe, he did a lot of the music for that one, so we built from that. Something like ‘Shake’, that’s all Jared but I do all the lyrics.’ Understandably, for a band that incorporates so many elements into each song, they draw on a lot of very diverse influences: ‘It changes through the years. I suppose the core ones would include Nick Cave and from that you discover other people. At the moment, there’s an Australian band called Party Dozen, who are amazing! It’s a two-piece, one guy playing drums and a lass playing sax, and she sings into the saxophone mic, and the drummer’s tripping loads of synth samples, and they’re really cool. I listen to them a lot. And a lot of Tom Waits at the minute, diving into that a bit.’ I say that he ‘s clearly drawn to poetic songwriters: ‘Yeah, definitely. I’ve always liked Tom Waits, Nick Cave and PJ Harvey and I’ll go through phases of just listening to one of them for a bit, going through all the albums. Or Bowie, the very first album is pretty fucking ridiculous! I love seeing the development of people.’

‘With ‘The Noise Between Us’, we liked it straight away, it had a very different feeling to anything else that we had on the album’

I say that from his opening vocals, ‘The Noise Between Us’ has a Bowie feel and he looks delighted: ‘Cool, I’m happy with that! Similar to ‘Nureyev’, we had pretty much all the music for that, all the organ and stuff written, and we structured it together. I think it was the last track before we went and recorded. Because of the way the world was, it kept getting pushed back and delayed. You’d have a deadline, which would be “We’re gonna go and make this thing in April” and then it’d get pushed back to “All right, now it’s December” and then May next year, so the album changed a lot. It would have been very different if we’d recorded it in April, say, to what it ended up being, which was good, in a way because we kept writing and developing and adding new-sounding things. With ‘The Noise Between Us’, we liked it straight away, it had a very different feeling to anything else we had on the album.’

Bell says he’s not really sure yet himself what ‘The Noise Between Us’ is about: ‘It’s kind of a rarity these days, but sometimes you kind of just find something like that where it just writes itself in a way. You take your brain out of it, and it very quickly just becomes this thing. Lyrically, that happened very fast. I’ll probably know in a year or so what it means (laughs).’ As the track kicks off: “Lights above go flying by. Glittering high. Out of phase with waves of colour. Waves of colour. Until the morning separates the monochrome with shards of golden rain. Again and again. The noise that lies between us.”

I say that his dad must have some incredible stories about playing with Bowie: ‘My dad was born in Stockton, grew up around here, and then moved down to London, and was involved in that Beckenham scene that they were all in together,’ Bell said. ‘I think it was more jam session-y, jam band-y stuff at that point, he was just in there doing a bit of that in various different bands. He’s not around anymore but if he was, that’s definitely something I’d want to find out more about!’

‘When we started playing, I couldn’t play any chord, so every single song was on one string!’

His introduction to music also came primarily via his dad and the musicians that would come round to jam: ‘We lived in Rosedale (on the North York Moors), where you’re right out into the countryside at the top of a valley, with your nearest neighbours half a mile down. He was always playing in different bands, and they’d come to the house to rehearse. There’d always be instruments set up, so you could play around. I don’t remember him ever sitting us down and teaching us how to play. They were just there, and we picked them up naturally, because it looked fun – and it was! It grew from there. He used to organise quite a lot of jam sessions and we’d go down there and watch that and enjoy that. I remember there used to be a rock covers band that’d come and play this pub in Rosedale and there was a really cool surf guitarist who’d be playing stuff like Dick Dale and Link Wray. We really loved him. And there’d be loads of blues people going on. The rock covers band that turned up and played Ace of Spades and For Whom the Bell Tolls had us up, me and my brother, as part of their set. So, that was fun! And then we moved on from doing that to starting our own bands. I think my first gig was when I was 11, which would have been a festival in Pickering, and then we started a band before we really knew how to play (laughs). We played a lot of gigs and got a little bit better. When we started playing, I couldn’t play any chords, so every single song was on one string (laughs). And I couldn’t change strings either once I was on it, so, it all had to be on the same string once I started!’

For all of its urgency, the making of the album required near-superhuman patience from the band. Recorded in November 2022 with Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age/Eagles of Death Metal) at Rancho de la Luna, his beautifully eccentric home studio on the edge of the Joshua Tree National Park, California, Avalanche Party were originally set to be there two years before but had to wait for the U.S. border to reopen after repeated lockdowns Stateside. Swapping subterranean Teesside for this magical, hazardous desert landscape populated with rattlesnakes, scorpions and cholla cacti, the band recorded the album in just ten days with Catching as their generous free-spirited pilot, his detailed knowledge of his idiosyncratic gear and Thanksgiving cooking sustaining the rapid-fire sessions.

They’d actually met Catching previously, having recorded their track ‘Dream Johnny Dream’ (2021) with him: ‘We got on really well, we loved the place,’ Bell said enthusiastically. ‘Through that, we stayed in touch and got the chance to make the album there, so we jumped at the chance!’ I tell him that I really love the Joshua Tree National Park and used to visit it a lot when I lived in California and he becomes very enthusiastic: ‘It’s kind of similar in a way to growing up in Rosedale – Rosedale has that similar kind of dead quiet, especially at night time and amazing clear skies. The people there, they’ve worked with everyone you can think of. They know everyone and they’ve got loads of amazing stories but they still just love being around making music, they’re still excited and curious and exactly the kind of people you want to be around when you’re doing that kind of thing. It’s so easy to get jaded with the industry but they haven’t got that at all.’

‘The “collateral damage” could be anything to anyone, and it definitely changes for me’

Bell says his favourite track on the album changes but at the moment it’s ‘Ecstasy’: ‘In fact, the very first time I started fucking around with ostrich tuning, years ago, trying to play it on a six string guitar, I wrote the music for that song then. It didn’t sound great on that (laughs) but I really liked the idea and kept it in the back for quite a long time.’ The closer, ‘Collateral Damage’, has something of a punky Depeche Mode vibe, there’s something almost trancelike about it, with the lines: “No questions. From the audience. From the secret police. From the spilling moon bleeding out wall to wall. Divine silence. Hear it fall. There’s no echoes at all.” As Bell explains: ‘There’s a lot of really good glitchy guitars on it. Lyrically that track is pretty sparse. The “collateral damage” could be anything to anyone, and it definitely changes for me. It’s about you, as an individual, how you navigate the world. Does that make sense?’

They’ve had some funny moments on the road, as Bell recounts: ‘Being a touring band these days tends to blur the lines between comedy and tragedy! We’ve had our fair share of moments that would cause most rational thinkers to take stock. It seems like you blink and find yourself sat ten feet in the air inside a splitter van on the back of a flatbed tow truck driving through rural France or in a tourbus getting towed through the Alps was pretty good! Being a band is a never-ending series of catastrophes sent to test the resolve of your gritted teeth. Hilarious – absolutely, but I’m not sure there’s a punchline. And maybe that’s the way it should go. This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around!’

If he could go for a pint with anyone, Bell is quick to pick James Brown: ‘He would be a laugh, wouldn’t he?! I’d watch him fly around the room. I don’t think there’d be much back and forth conversation (laughs). I’d ask him: ‘What are you drinking?” I’d pass him the Guinness and watch him go!’

(Top photo from left to right: Glen, Joe, Kane, Jared and Jordan.)

(Photo credits: Alison Morton, Kyle Howells and Paul Barclay.)