No Bad Memories is a tribute to old technology and the virility of advertising. Jingles are thrown around, scattered like the ashes of The Who Sell Out, and nostalgia is located in unusual, yet accepted, spaces.

I have my own nostalgia itch, likely ushered by my own childhood media memories, and furthered by this very specific thought I have, that if I lived in a big house, I’d dedicate a room to the technology of my youth; CRT televisions with VCRs, stereos with tape players, every console manufactured by SEGA – that’s right, even you, 32X.

Such a room would be a haven for me. I could switch everything on and switch myself off. The Avalanches’ fourth album, for the most part, forces audiences to switch off their ADHD-addled brains. Much like advertising, the album just keeps throwing shit at you in a manner that blockades its profundity, its celebration of technology at a point in history when it wasn’t killing us. It’s jumpy, it’s dizzy, it’s chocolate, it’s soda, it’s kids’ toys, it’s a hyperactive, anthropomorphic mascot.

Amid the explosive noises, like fireworks for the ears, like keys for dogs, Blue Shadows and All the Time in the World become the most useful songs of the album. On the former, Karen O is contemplative, envisioning herself as a brightly-glowing, celestial entity amid a sample of Blue Gas’s Shadows from Nowhere. On the latter, all attention is drawn to Rivers Cuomo’s effortless melodies, despite its drifting, magical aesthetic, part woods, part heaven, part Island in the Sun.

Like rest holds in wrestling matches, these slower moments, in which the club drugs wear off, are vital to the album’s sanity. But necessary all the same is the album’s profundity in and of itself, its amour for nostalgia. Have you heard a happier Avalanches album? Sure, there are only three others, but the happiness, the energy, the spirit of No Bad Memories is unlocked by its fondness for the old.

That’s no surprise; this is plunderphonics! The pioneers of plunder are taking from all sorts of sources to evoke unity, which is spotlit most on Together, in its chanting hook which is taken from the television version of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, which I do remember watching when I was young. I remember the dog.

The Avalanches are the latest to sample Dr. Kool’s Let Me Clear My Throat, as a beautiful, whistly countermelody retorts on the Jamie XX-featured Every Single Weekend. They use Wilson Williams’ I Can’t Get Used to Losing You, and Portraits of Tracy, to relocate the freeing, youthful vibes of a classic MGMT song. That’s my way of saying it unlocks the same form of childlike freedom as Kids.

Carly Simon’s Make Me Feel Something is wrapped by lacy zaps and odd string-like synths on One More Fantasy. The song produces the shimmers and shudders of old in-VHS advertising – I say ‘old’ as if there are newer examples. It also contains an unmistakable clip of Ricky Gervais laughing.

Vida and Magic Wand are unruly house-disco that will make you want to dance with a goose. Erick the Architect produces pop rap sans embarrassment, like a Gorillaz-featured emcee.

No Bad Memories is all-memories, even with the risk of these sound explosions simply passing you by, fleetingly screaming through one ear and dancing out the other. There are some memories unmade; the Avalanches meet fellow plunder prince Panda Bear on Highfield, with results much less hooky than those of the rest of the album.

But this is a long album, with so much momentum and movement that there are bound to be a few spaces in which the intended nostalgia itch isn’t scratched. The overall itch of No Bad Memories – its hunt for nostalgia, for profundity and happiness in its nostalgia – is certainly scratched. The album’s power is tangible, its lauding of delicious floppy disks made of chocolate. Its messaging is key; more a cheesy idea – which The Avalanches have generally been able to turn into dignified results, see Frankie Sinatra – than a thumbs-up thrown to the sources it takes from. No Bad Memories is not a commercialist album; it does not celebrate commercialism – if anything, it satirises – but it does, if anything, celebrate physical media, the type you could whack your friends over the head with.

Best tracks – Together – Blue Shadows – All the Time in the World – Can’t Get Over Losing You.

Rating – 7 out of 10