The waiting game

Wondered what the hell the Avalanches were up to in the 16 years it took to produce the follow-up to Since I Left You? Well, here's the answer, courtesy of Robbie Chater: "financial meltdown, serious illness, experimentation with powerful hallucinogenic drugs, the departure of band members, the collapse of their record label and Chater's insistence on using the same equipment that they'd made Since I Left You with, on which he'd stored umpteen musical ideas". In those terms, it seems remarkable that Wildflower exists at all.