M83?

this is a bit, how you say, 'dodge': "the sounds that have constituted some of the most vapid, hedonistic, and forgettable music of our time have come back to make us cry.". of course them coming back to make us HAPPY again and remind us why we danced to them in our discos/clubs/spiderman costumes in the mid 80s (for that seems to be the brand of 'disposability' matt lemay's referencing) would somehow be not what we were looking for at all.

yes blah blah boring pitchfork complaint move on nothing to see here

Nevertheless, I like it.

the cyann and ben version of "in church" is utterly lush with that acoustic guitar in there.

Wild guess: Seefeel? (Note: I've hardly ever heard Seefeel.)

Is it a book about farming?

In a similar way, the drum machines on S3's "Playing With Fire" bug me a lot, particularly on tracks like Suicide. So I try letting them recede into the listening background.

the high points on ddamage's "radio ape" are at least as good as those on the m83 album.

i think the problem might be a wee bit of overexposure to IDM on the part of the indie-mag electronica reviewers who get stuff like m83 dumped in their boxes. if you've been ignoring IDM for the last few years - as any sane person would - and enjoy m83 you will probably find ddamage well worth your time.

and lest i piss off any indie-mag reviewers i will point out that the esteemed dominique leone called my attention to this album.

No, really.

Anyhow, regarding M83, I think they're a very terrible case of production over songwriting ( a la Four Tet ), though maybe I'm biased, I've never been too much of a fan of the shoegazer deal.

Laptop speakers don't/won't suffice.

Still, I'll see the show next month with both them and Schnauss, I figure. It might actually work more for me live!

Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled.

David St. Hubbins: What?

Ian Faith: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

And I got my hands (er, my hard drive) on the new album today ... I will listen later ...

That will be the year of 2005 ! the album gets released in January 2005 ;-)

I'm still miffed about their using backing tapes to do the synths live, which was lame.

Anyway I'll probably grow to like this album more, but it's not as exciting as the last one was.

More precisely, the closest kin to this record is Sianspheric's "There's Always Someplace You'd Rather Be", which also tried to be "Isn't Anything" when it wasn't trying to be Slowdive's "Pygmalion".

what is THIS? I've never heard of this! I must hear it immediately.

(xpost -- Kyle, they're a Canadian band on the Sonic Unyon label. The album came out in 1998. There must be an AMG entry for them. All three of their albums are well worth your time)

That's why I like it so much. My main problem with shoegaze related music is the lack of rock, the lack of propulsion, especially in opposition with slower/quieter moments within the same song. Fennesz (and other laptoppers) can be beautiful and/or powerful, but there's not enough there for me to love - Endless Summer worked for me because the songs were there. I guess as much as I love 'noise', it's not enough by itself - I still need songs (which is why I loved Dntel's "Dream of Evan and Chan") and the noise must still serve the purpose of the emotion, or the melody or the groove. You could say that's it's one thing to love the feeling of the ocean, but I guess I still need to swim. Slowdive and similar slowgaze music is often too plodding and often has this odd goth affectation (which I think Ned is more fond of than I).

If "Dead Cities" was M83 trying to replicate "Loveless", then this one is M83 trying to replicate "Isn't Everything".

An interesting equation - I'd say they get even closer to the highs of Loveless on this record (although there's nothing identikit about it). They've found their own songwriting here - a continuation of "Run Into Flowers". I'll definitely have more specific things to say as I listen more.

Also, I don't really get what's cheesy about "A Guitar and a Heart", song or title-wise.

Very, very well worth your time. I highly agree with Barry's assessment of Sianspheric, they are the spiff.

You are correct, sir! But if Slowdive started off Cure they ended up Durutti.

So did "Digital Love"!

(although yeah, I had actually skimmed past the beginning part before which takes a bit of getting used to. I think it's *classic* by the end!)

they are soon to be on my hard drive as well, thanks for the recommendation

Dude, that really does sound like their Mogwai fetish is in full effect!

So it's like the first album?

I'm always amazed how simple alterations to a group's sound can force a cringe from even the most ardent fans. Earlier this year, some Palace aficionados were disturbed by Will Oldham's conversion of his lo-fi porch songs into slick Memphis country. Well, there's more horror on the horizon-- the separation between M83 and Journey is thinner than you had possibly imagined. Consider "Guitar and a Heart", its monochrome chord progressions, minor-key guitar slides, and arena rock drum fills. Or its new-age synth-- sounds typically produced by scarf-wearing thirtysomethings, guys shielded by Casios stacked three high who only manage to play one note. Of course, you have no idea what my face looks like as I listen to this unfortunate misstep, so let me describe it to you-- it reads something like "eeew." [Joel Ebner; December 1st, 2004

He's obviously assuming that the entire album sounds like that -- he'll be a bit embarassed when he hears the whole thing!

You've been reading Pitchfork for how long exactly? I mean, I think both of those qualities are pretty sewn-in to fabric of Pitchfork's reputation/infamy/unpopularity around ILX.

And there's nothing wrong with calling them out on something, even if it's been done many times before. I actually revived this on this thread in order to support the new M83 record in my own little way.

"Pitchfork SAYS:"

X

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00070Q8HC.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

"Don't Save Us From the Flames" is starting to sound like something from the "Flashdance" soundtrack to me. It's still awesome, though.

(the cover, that is. not the music. which i haven't heard yet and am oddly apprehensive about.)

Better than the last album though.

Brilliant. Now I *really* like them.

i don't know though because bits of the album sound like the score to blade runner too, so...

but the 1st and 3rd track are 100% epic.

Yeah, there was something kind of cringeworthy about them. I liked the album, though.

*distant cries in the night*

An interesting comparison. Cities etc. struck me as well-meaning but ultimately dull on record, this in contrast actually feels *alive* for lack of a better term.

I think that's the only thing that bugs me about them really - a lot of this and the last album seems very, well... "by numbers"(?). Boards of Canada, and even bands like Autechre manage to make their music sound like it was composed by human beans but this seems very sequenced and automatic.

still. i fucking love this. and firstworldman, no, that makes absolutely perfect sense.

It's lovely, though the original may be even better.

Don't Save Us From The Flames and the Superpitcher remix of same are still ace though.

Very much agreed. This is a massive step up and I'm glad -- they had potential but I don't think it was reached fully until now.

Still a great song though.

It'll be fun,
It'll be fun,
It'll be fun when we run into flowers.

(repeat)

as for what the gigs were like ... well, i can die fulfilled and happy now.

as for the singles: the remixes of "flames" are astonishing, particularly superpitcher's.

Also, I missed their Coachella performance, but I heard a lot of very good things about it. The drummer is excellent.

"A Guitar and a Heart" is indeed mindblowing when they do it live. When I saw them, that song alone was worth the price of admission. But I don't understand why they mix the synth so low in their live setup. Songs like "Run Into Flowers" should be drowning in it.

thanks again for the heads-up, spencer.

because at least when I saw them, no-one played the synth, it was a DAT or something.

it's really good. i like it alot.

can some kind soul explain why the bloody hell i can't download anything from yousendit? the !!! track (y'know, the one from the other thread) ... i got 29% through and it stuck. i now can't seem to connect at all. this: 1% and it's stuck.

i mean, it works as a web download. surely there aren't firewall issues. are there?

i'm just kinda puzzled as to why i'm getting nowhere with what should be a very simple download. is anyone else having problems? is this just a bad night in yousendit world?

thanks again, willem. i assume you have the "don't save me" remixes that i mentioned upthread?

safari now seems to be doing a much more stable job than firefox. perhaps it's time i re-migrated :)

(x-post: it works for me on safari)

coo ur, the things you learn. i'm going back to wget from now on, anyway.

But... Firefox is the prime Mozilla derivative! Maybe you mean Mosaic. I was having some weird connection issues to YSI when you were, I think that they were having problems.

Anyway, this Luciano mix is crazy long! I think it's another one of those where I feel a little shiver every time I hear some element of the original song come in, just because it's so gradual.

which reminds me. i ordered the first M83 album from gooom the other week and it hasn't turned up yet. hmm.

Also: use Camino, dudes. Mac-specific Firefox. Word.

Thanks for the mp3's, grimly!

I think it was Sonic Youth. I was actually a little annoyed that he didn't namecheck the obvious...

Come on, ye YSI. Thanks, Grimly.

In brief (and risking the wrath of the injured Spencer) -- I sense what they were thinking of when they came up with the song and enjoy that, but the end results are kinda flat. (See also most everything by the Killers.)

scene: mono, the glasgow bar, october 7, 2003. GRIMLY and his MATE, whose birthday it is, are sitting being morose in the corner.

MATE: so anyway, i was thinking ...
[the BARMAN puts a CD in the machine and a SONG starts up. it is buzzy and interesting]
MATE: ... and it's the most incredible idea in the world ever ...
[suddenly the SONG begins a beautiful weaving melody and a glorious series of crescendos]
MATE: and it's really, really important that we talk about it now otherwi ... [clang]
[MATE falls over as GRIMLY rushes past him, grabs the BARMAN by the throat and demands to know what this life-changing piece of music is. it turns out to be "run into flowers", and thus a new dawn in GRIMLY'S life begins. many of his friends receive copies of "dead cities" for their birthdays/christmas, including his MATE, who is so blown away he never remembers his big idea. everyone lives slightly more happily ever after than they would without the healing power of "run into flowers".]

well, something like that, anyway.

Righteousness knows no wounds!

Good on yer, that's something close to how I felt when I first heard "Soon." Dead Cities left me cold aside from the final track that just went on forever but did so interestingly. This is one reason why I'm so impressed with the new one, it just feels much more ON -- like leaping out of the speakers and enveloping me immediately on -- and the hyperdrama works whereas the previous one's efforts did not. It felt cold, sterile almost, like those Delgados mega-orchestrated albums that left me terribly cold. The sheer *awe* in which "Run Into Flowers" is regarded with by so many is impressive but I just don't feel it at all.

And then again -- "pure sublime tone and movement, rapturous and melancholy" = that Mogwai track to me. I mean, seriously, this is a great description! I'd just rather use it for another song! :-)

Somewhere way upthread, I compared M83's "Dead Cities" to Spacemen 3's "Playing With Fire". The latter has never been one of my fave S3 albums in part because the drum machines give it a glossy, synthetic quality which I think is unbecoming to S3 (live versions of the same songs are a completely different matter, though).

Similarly, tracks like "Run Into Flowers" and "0078h" have a glossy, overly-polished feel compared to the rawer "Before the Dawn ..." songs, in large part because more real instruments were used. So I can understand why some people would be (perhaps unexpectedly, in the case of someone like Ned) left cold by "Run Into Flowers".

(note: I'm not trying to get all psychoanalytic on him, or argue for the superiority of "real instruments" (yuck))

Furthermore, I would apply those exact criticisms to M83's tour opener, Ulrich Schnauss, who takes an approach to shoegazing that is approx 1000X glossier than anything M83 have done.

The Mogwai set sounds most special. I'm envious! :-) Glad I've seen them a couple of times, though.

ysi?

Give me grace and chemicals,
I want to run into.

i'd YSI it but hymn doesn't appear to be working with stuff bought in iTunes 6, so ... anyway, it's only 79p. go on, get it. it sounds, basically, like a great lost depeche mode track.

Bloc Party - The Pioneers (M83 remix)

http://s5.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=35BFRBNPNNTIA36WPDBFAVLDH5

GET DOWNLOADING, THE KIDS.

See, this way you will now see how great Bloc Party are. Wait, where are you going?

This is the best description of M83 I have ever read. Amazing!

so i got an e-mail -- in french -- a couple of days ago telling me all about m83's new "ambient" album. i was suspicious.

i just listened to the tiny extract -- 1'30" worth of new song -- on myspace (go on, you can guess the address).

i wept. i'm not joking. somehow the music he makes is hard-wired to my soul. it's not even a reaction i try to explain any more.

out on september 3 (in the US and france, anyway; not sure about the UK yet.) i have a feeling it might just pip jesu, trans am and low -- and the mute box set -- to the coveted "grimly album of the year" spot, and i've not even heard the fucker yet.

based on that minute and a half, though ... no, really.

ewan pearson has been working on this, apparently.

I sometimes forget how massively in love I was/have been/still am with M83 (esp. their debut and "Dead Cities..."). Thank you for my new-found anticipation for their/his next disc!

I am, however, doubly intrigued by grimly fiendish's high regard for Trans Am's latest. I'd read it was a return-to-form of sorts (personally, secretly hoping for a "Surrender To The Night" era resurgence of some kind sometime), but hadn't seen "Sex Change" held in such high regard elsewhere {which is my roundabout way of saying, tell me more! (please)}.

my sex change thred in all its glory

it's probably the best thing they've done, to be honest. it's more ... what's the word? "focused", perhaps ... than "surrender" (and certainly than "red line"), and certainly less knowing than "liberation" (which i actually think is enormously under-rated). it's like essence of trans am; all the ingredients distilled into an album of perfection.

really. it's that good. it's better than that. go get.

(how did "mi" become "my" there? grr.)

the lack of interest in this could also make me weep.

Mogwai on "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong" created a song which I still think is probably their finest effort, and nailed the crescendo/epic/lead melody combination SO perfectly, so rightly. It stands out still for me as an example of sublime, careful arrangement, of making sure everything is in its place, of huge scope and quiet, reflective detail. It's a song that makes me glad to be alive.

HAHA this is word-for-word pretty much what I think! I might have 'Kids Will Be Skeletons' just ahead of it for economy purposes, but it's a close-run thing.

just listened to "digital shades volume one". i was going to say it's like the wonder of the music is in some kind of inverse proportion to the shitness of the cover:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FrNVGI8iL._SS500_.jpg

but, actually, the more i look, the more i like. don't ask me why.

the music, though ... ah, my god. it's not an album proper -- it's more like a collection of fragments -- but it ends up like distilled essence of M83, and as such is in the orbit of perfection. there's none of the exultation of the last one; it's much more introspective (although, y'know, with M83 these things are relative) and almost painfully poignant in parts.

fundamentally: quite, quite exquisite.

it's less than 40 minutes, too, which probably means i'll listen to it more than some of the other stuff. in fact, i think i'm going to listen again now. sleep? fuck that.

(a small but very tired part of me now wishes i'd gone to sleep instead of staying up drinking whisky, listening to M83 and reading irvine welsh.)

I often wish I'd done things other than reading Irvine Welsh.

i often wish more people on ILM liked M83.

ah heck i'd probably like these dudes, i'll go download some now

HURRAH.

enjoy.

Might be reviewing the new album for Plan B, waiting to hear back.

xpost, I think many people do, it's just that this album has been presented oddly as kind of an interim thing - maybe people just want the next "proper" album.

you might be right, spencer -- which is a shame. then again: maybe it's actually the kind of thing only a hardcore brainwashed M83 slave could love. in which case ... ach, hey, i'm happy with that.

I've loved the two M83 albums, and hadn't even heard of anything new yet. So I am eagerly awaiting this...

grimly, I have a grand total of 6 songs by M83 and I treasure them. I don't post a lot but I read ILM pretty much every day, and I think there may be plenty of us partial lurkers who like* (what they've heard of) this band. The question is, should their albums be listened to as albums, or are my more piecemeal listening methods acceptable?

*I think "like" is an understatement here.

well, purely personally, i feel that if i'm going to invest emotional time and energy in something so ... well, intense ... it works better over the longer format. then again: i can be sitting on the bus and think, heh, listening to "lower your eyelids" would add an interesting new dimension to this journey.

i'd suggest starting off with either "dead cities" or "before the dawn" -- i prefer the latter, FWIW -- and seeing what you make of the full, glorious album journey ;)

i kinda like these guys but i'm rarely in the mood for somethign so starchild-birth-of-the-universe-supernova...ish.

Wow this new one is really great. Like M83 vs Vangelis or something. Mellower than Before the Dawn but I can listen to it straight through.

There's something quite elegant about it.

I'm always amused whenever this thread comes up because it's a combination of Grimly and Spencer and I eventually having an argument about them. ;-)

i can be sitting on the bus and think, heh, listening to "lower your eyelids" would add an interesting new dimension to this journey.

Ha, this is one of the six (actually seven, i just recounted) songs I have of theirs. For what it's worth, the breakdown is four from Before The Dawn... and three from Dead Cities..., but I'm going to spring for the former as soon as I get the chance. One of the motivators for my question was that I seed a few mixes with their stuff and it really seems to work (one in particular with a lot of Boards of Canada springs to mind), so I'm used to thinking of them as disparate tracks, even though I get the feeling that their albums are cohesive or something.

I also find them elegant. But also sparkly at times, which is not exactly offputting but disconcerting in some way.

any idea whether there's there going to be a US release for Digital Shades, or ought i look for the import?

meow

boyfriend has m83 on and they sound terrific

The US release is digital-only- has one more track than the physical release, but you can get the import for more or less domestic prices at Amazon and a few other places.

i like that the pieces are shorter. way easier to take.

Saturdays = Youth

dammmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

We're all over that.

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Finally got round to getting this.

Some of those 'eighties' reviews totally put me off - on first listen this sounds like no real departure from previous stuff - ie pretty good.

It's all in the suspended chords and the layering. Gazetastic

Or perhaps I misunderstood Duran Duran after all.

It does remind me of Flock of Seagulls 'wishing' though. A song I really do love.For some strange reason

wishing always reminds me of slowdive, for some reason. it definetely has a shoegazy palette.

I just heard "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph)" on XM this am in the car -- didn't remotely remind me of this.

"Moonchild" is beautiful. The rest I find frustrating. All frosting --- bouncy textures --- no cake.

Ah shit, I would love to have seen this: M83 and the LA Philharmonic. They played the fucking Pioneers remix! And Lower Your Eyelids!

Graah. I sincerely, sincerely hope that gets some kind of CD/DVD release.

When they were here last March, they were the support band on a $20 ticket, and Gonzalez had to play solo with laptop and a borrowed guitar because Air France lost all the band gear. He promised they’d come back, and this month they are: on a $75 headline ticket (or $140 festival). Someone’s going to be giving away a lot of comps.

i saw that show! xpost

Ho! How was it? (In some ways I want you to say "not quite as good as you think", but that's just because I'm horrifically jealous.)

it was better than i could have DREAMED~

anthony gonzalez played a trio of solo tracks, which ranged from ambient knob-twiddling to some really propulsive almost 'second toughest' underworld-type of track, then the la phil came on and played the part and debussy pieces, then the collaboration. they stuck to 'before the dawn heals us' and 'digital shades' tracks, i think.

Yeh, I figured that from the setlist ... and those are my two favourite M83 albums, by far. *Weeps*.

Really glad you enjoyed it so much. Man, they have to release a recording in some form ...

btw the la weekly review by this hack named randall roberts contends that m83 bombed and that part of the problem was he had written all new compositions specifically for the show, when he should have played his own compositions. (the writer is one of these cut rate replacement level dudes who was brought in from another paper.)

Erm...Randall's the editor of the music section. Friendly guy, too.

(Not to say you have to like his writing, admittedly!)

i'm sure but damn he kinda made something up too about someone shouting something from the audience : /

like someone shouted "yeah!" when the phil started coming out and he turned it into someone screaming "finally some real musicians!" which would be funny except it was being used as an example of turning an audience that was enjoying the show into an audience that was turning on m83 (the crowd was 95% eastside indie kids imo!)

Hmm, weird.

(God this is somehow reminding me of the time I accidentally shouted something to a friend about going to the bar and confused the Ass Ponys, who were on stage at the time. Go figure.)

i remember some drunk girl at a hushed low show thought it would be funny to scream for everyone to be quiet so she could hear the music, which i think resulted in her getting tossed out.

"And that girl's name...was Chan Marshall."

http://www.constitutioncenter.org/timeline/flash/assets/asset_upload_file162_12197.jpg

Yo La Tengo 1950

Brief excerpt from the currently untitled upcoming double album, which is slated for October release and will feature Zola Jesus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU6TB8jet-Q&feature=player_embedded

More about the Zola Jesus collaboration here: http://pitchfork.com/news/42738-new-m83-album-to-feature-zola-jesus/

raaah

i like m83 a lot and can even forgive him the blandly panglossian montage that resembles a prestige ad for a finance company

Haha yeah, it makes me think he saw the Tree Of Life and attempted a cheesy homage to the creationist part

Midnight City

^nice sax

any thoughts on the new album? i was hoping the 80s nostalgia thing was just a pleasant tangent, instead it seems our hero is going deeper and deeper into his childhood

A bit disappointing, to be honest - I've played it a bunch of times now but nothing's really sticking. And the first track just makes me wish Zola Jesus was singing on all of them. :/

Anyone seen him/them live recently? Thinking about catching a show on Halloween night.

Am really, really hoping this version is not what the thing will sound like in the end, so I will hold back with my final verdict until listened to it in some proper conditions, heavyweight white-marbled 4LP-Deluxe-Gatefold Premium-Package on a full moon at 4am might do.

Up to this point and with only 3-4 spins it seems to resemble Until the Dawn the most. Minus the the crasser passages like Asterisk, plus god-awful vocals at times, plus pathos cranked up to whole new levels (which is not that surprising). Some real bummers on it though.

9.1

Can't hack the new album at all. It just sounds like a lot of structural pop moves stitched together without any content in the way of good tunes. It's all "drop the synth line for a few seconds and then BRING IT BACK LOUDER" and "ok let's add a choral bit here", but few of the songs have any good reason to exist in the first place.

So yeah, I don't like it. Saturdays = Youth is still brilliant though.

This is a totally self-indulgent 80s comfort food album and I love it

reminds me of talk talk in places

so wrong

This is a totally self-indulgent 80s comfort food album and I love it

― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Wednesday, October 19, 2011 11:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I love how shamelessly epic this album is. I also love how it recalls early Simple Minds. I don't necessarily love how much it sounds like Explosions in the Sky at times.

mixed feelings on this. initial listen did NOT pop for me - kinda felt like a watered down interpolation of m83's greatest hits or something. like, i'm noticing stray elements taken from previous m83 albums, but all reimagined in cheery major chords. at first, it felt way too cheesy. then i remembered thinking back to my initial reaction to S=Y, and how much of a grower that was. so i gave HUWD a few more listens, and it got better every time. it's a pretty deep album surprisingly - very bittersweet. like, "splendor" is a killer breakup song, and wtf is up with the end of "raconte-moi une histoire"... "it'd be great... right?"

some stray thoughts:

- it's interesting how his album-by-album progression into cheese is so positive linear.
- he mentioned in an interview the two discs are meant to be complimentary - each song has a brother/sister on the other disc, which i find mad cool. since i forgot to separately tag disc 1 and 2, my mp3 player plays each 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 song from alternating discs, and i can see the parallels between songs a bit.
- love the joshua tree guitars on "reunion"
- i wanna be a fuckin magic frog. i wouldn't like a world where everything is a damn cupcake tho
- the splendor/wait brother/sister pair are by far my fav tracks on the DD (double disc)
- i like zola jesus but the "ft. zola jesus" is a little ???

oh ya, i also like "echoes of mine" throwing it back to the muffled vocal samples of the first m83 album, then BLOWING IT ALL THE F UP

Reminds me of It Bites in places.

That Fork review not OTM about this being the easiest M83 to listen to in one sitting, and also about the instrumentals all being important. Also, the songs are generally not as strong as they were on the last album, and the tendency toward wordless Coldplay-esque "whoooo-oooa!" ing is downright annoying. But there are enough bits of loveliness and anthemic cheese spread throughout here that I still enjoy it. Just, again ... sort of shameless.

<3 "claudia lewis" & "midnight city"
dont give a fuck abt the rest, i think

i co-sign that post if you switch "steve mcqueen" out for "midnight city"

i totally get why people love this band/album, and i def like them, but idk as much as i want to go head over heels for them... i just can't idk

Listened to some stuff today, and it sounds great. Ended up adding them to this historical Spotify playlist that I am working on: http://open.spotify.com/user/geirhong/playlist/4G7v8uE45O2Hr94Je2Bgy7

I really do love this record, but like in two years this specific brand of Drive soundtrack shrillwave blown-out RETROZANIA is gonna be more embarassing than the Faint's Flock Of Seagulls haircut by 2005, so enjoy this while it lasts kiddies

It's embarrassing now. That's part of its charm.

I've had Desire's album for a couple of years now, and it's still great. xpost

Man, I just realized that half of this album sounds like that Justin Bieber track that was slowed down 800%.

that thing was awesome!

It's embarrassing now. That's part of its charm.

yeah, and the unironic nature of m83's 80s-fixation is a big part of the appeal.

by contrast, my fixation with the starlight vocal band is 48% ironic, and 52% ironic.

Just figured out that there's a bonus track called "Mirror" that comes with the album. You have to find the code on the case underneath the booklet and enter it here: http://www.m83mirror.com/. It's really hard to read and took me forever to make out the characters. Oh, and as for the song, I can see why it's not on the album...

This is a totally self-indulgent 80s comfort food album and I love it

That "Midnight Sun" outro sax solo is right outta the PSB's "Suburbia."

"Claudia Lewis" sounds exactly like New Order's "Thieves Like Us". Or is it just me?

But yeah, the shamelessness in the way he rips off all of his favourite 80's bands is a big part of the album's appeal.

"Claudia Lewis" reminds me a bit of the Ford and Lopatin album (which is obv. influenced by a ton of 80s stuff).

Man, there are some absolutely fantastic moments on here ("Steve McQueen", "Wait", "Intro", "Claudia Lewis", "Midnight Sun"), but enough clunkers to really keep it from being as exciting as it could be from start to finish. I know its cliche to trot this out for every double-album ever, but there is a seriously amazing single disc in here somewhere.

Yeah, it's definitely overstuffed.

haven't bothered to read this thread yet, but...

there was an ilx mbv thread in which nabisco waxed poetically about how "when you sleep" had this ecstatic-sounding refrain. which kinda carried the song

and i think that there are a couple of tracks on hurry up that do that thing. also using the same devices maybe-- sequencer-driven refrain interposed with somewhat understated verses (though for sure less guitar-driven). i know i've heard "midnight city" before when i was out, at least i think i have... but at home actually sitting down and listening to it, i think it captures that expansive euphoric feeling so well. hard to argue with.

think it's even a more potent distillate than some of those loveless tracks. crack/powder analogy IF YOU WILL

My problem with the album is the angsty yelpy vocals as apposed to the calmer whispery delivery on all the past albums that were great because they contrasted the epic-ness of the songs so well. Makes them sound less mature without at least one element of the music holding back a bit.

yeah, i think i get what you're saying, but i feel the opposite. like i love that there's not much subtlety. fits in with the vibe. like dude was just bursting at the seams and couldn't contain himself and so the songs are just OUT THERE HUGE

Yeah, I mean I like Midnight City and a few other songs I don't know by name, but that whole approach drives him closer to a 2000s era mall-emo synth band kind of aesthetic in my honest opinion!

Also, wordless anthemic Coldplay vox.

Been loving this star for quit a long while
It's still OK. The mine he's seaming.

Could do better though

Yeah, I mean I like Midnight City and a few other songs I don't know by name, but that whole approach drives him closer to a 2000s era mall-emo synth band kind of aesthetic in my honest opinion!

Yeah, I think I get that. Like in Midnight City the synth sound is almost generic "bangers by rote" setting or something

but i have listened to it a thousand times over the past few days, and each time it gets better. but maybe it just speaks to some part of me. or maybe i am just trying to annoy my neighbors in a semi-original way

I dl this album, listened to some of the tracks and haven't got back to it since. I liked some of their previous stuff and in theory I should like this but I agree that it's too... "too much" !
I can't really stand the guy's voice on this and the whole production/arrangements just get on my nerves after a (short) while.

Raconte-Moi Des Histoire came on random the other day and it epitomises what irks me about this guy. I know not all his songs are like this, but I had the first album, and it was pretty good if a bit slow and lacking in oomph, and then the second one had all these cheesy samples that jut out like sore thumbs. Something really euro-90s about his style, kind of reminds me of the same aesthetic Aeroplane went with on their album.

the last thing I think of when I think of M83 is samples, tbh

synth swells and gated drums, sure

no problems with that (although the wet wet drums are enough) but I remember it was the samples on that second album that stopped me enjoying it.

ah I see, there are a bunch of M83 albums I didn't know existed, lol

the previous album had good moments but was already very borderline for me. this latest one kinda jumped the shark (but good for them since it made them famous !)

I think it was "Teen Angst" (can't remember?) but there was loads of screaming samples and these ratty drums that reminded me of bad industrial metal from the mid-90s, and - I dunno, I could tell what he was going for but it just wasn't working.

"Teen Angst" is on the third album, fyi

oh yeah. always forget about the very first one.

listening to Digital Shades atm and am very glad dude discovered drum machines

I think Midnight City has been forever spoilt for me after seeing that guy "auditioning" for it on youtube...

huh ?

http://youtu.be/qWTLSZottgc

oops
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qWTLSZottgc"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

ok, i give up

I only got about 5 seconds into that once the song started

BIG mistake (that is if you are at all into yelping)

people that yelp are scumbags

So are these dudes any good live? Really want them to be, because I heart the new record so much.

i hear midnight city every time i walk into a store, turn on the radio, or basically leave my house. enough.

I saw them live after the second album, they were great but there was something canned about the performance, I remember; lots of backing tracks. it was still pretty good. no idea what he/they are like now.

I wish I lived in your city.

they were pretty good when I saw them at Lollapalooza 2005 after Before the Dawn Heals Us and they were really good, particularly for playing early in the afternoon heat, a setting that did no favors for this type of stuff

After years of waiting for a chance I finally saw them some weeks ago at an indoor festival in Cologne. So maybe shorter set, not full stage setup, stronger emphasis on the new album and thus to be honest not the great revelation I had always imagined.

Gonzalez pretty much up to 11 in everything he's doing, constantly changing snow white instruments, climbing monitor speakers, praying etc., quite entertaining. Apart from that I don't remember any breathtaking visual stuff, which was a bit of a letdown. As akm mentioned the majority of the synths and effects seemed to be pre-recorded, not surprising considering apart from Gonzalez there was only drummer, bassist and the pretty keyboard singer on stage. Very good thing she's apparently still on board, but in a way it only increases the pain thinking about how great the new album could have been without the yelps and with some actual singing.

Still thinking about visiting the Primavera Festival only to see these guys play directly besides the Mediterranean sea.

http://fororchestra.bandcamp.com/track/m83-midnight-city-for-orchestra

Just heard this. Rolled my eyes when I saw it because "____ for Orchestra" versions are rarely any good, but this guy got it right. Too bad it's probably a Logic recording and not a real orchestra.

In case anyone missed this, full video of M83 at Coachella:

http://www.prefixmag.com/news/watch-m83s-entire-coachella-performance/64356/

Don't know if it's from a forthcoming new album, but it's good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLuLEgtDPVQ

its from the score he wrote for Oblivion

susanne sundfør is great. feeling this.

You don't expect to hear M83 in a Persil advert.

... it has made me intrigued to hear the album, mind.

Not quite sure how I feel about this new song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryh9rkIRGUs

On the plus side, it looks like Susanne Sundfor is featured on one song on the upcoming album.

Are they trying to muscle in on Cut Copy's territory?

I almost said the same thing but with Hot Chip instead.

And for a brief moment I forgot that Hot Chip and Cut Copy were different bands.

Why does every new pop artist sound like Supertramp? Is there a new plug-in or something?

And for a brief moment I forgot that Hot Chip and Cut Copy were different bands.

lol i just had this moment, and i've listened extensively to both

2016 seems to be the year of me landing on the wrong side of every critical consensus because I like this album a lot

i actually do too. first four tracks i think are some of gonzalez's best songs ever

Me too loved Animal Collective and this one but they both get bad reviews.

i mean it coheres less than his other records and feels like a product of frustration but the songs are stronger imo

the song with Beck reminds of french shitty marriage songs

The Beck song sound the most like something that wouldn't be that out of place on Random Access Memories.

Random Access Memories reminds me of french shitty marriage songs

the susanne sundfør track sounds like bonnie raitt in space, which is my aesthetic

I have no idea what "french shitty marriage songs" are but I probably like them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSAuNQ3lgB4&list=PL55FF6DF555809282

meant to link to that Stop Lucie song. not the entire playlist.

some gems in that playlist actually. not saying it's all terrible, but it's inherently hit or miss for me, and when it misses it misses hard. i think Junk mines way more of that than anglo critics will care to search for.

the beck song is super nice

ok yes french shitty wedding songs kick ass

idk i guess there's a "tastelessness" to this record that people aren't willing to cross over into unless its radiating through some other cloud of aesthetics e.g. bon iver and bruce hornsby?

well I mean the taste thing was a given ever since midnight city became what it did

The early Verge review was negative, but the rest seem positive.

I LOVE it.

There are a lot of moments that sound like extrapolations of Daft Punk / Paul Williams "Touch".

Beck is doing his best Sebastien Tellier on the verses.

There are a lot of moments that sound like extrapolations of Daft Punk / Paul Williams "Touch".

oh no 😱😢

oh yeah

the susanne sundfør track sounds like bonnie raitt in space, which is my aesthetic

aww

It took me a while to put my finger on who Laser Gun reminded me of, figured it was Annie, i'm relieved.

This sounds like ELO + 10000Hz Legend-era Air, which is totally fine by me.

Holy shit! Need to listen to this then. ELO + my fave Air album?! Hell yes.

the susanne sundfør track sounds like bonnie raitt in space

I can't ever listen to this song now because there's no way it will really live up to that description.

I had tuned out after Sat.=Youth and I'm now pretty baffled to see where M83's at these days.
Poster upthread OTM re. french wedding songs. A couple of tunes are definitely pastiche of 80's French Top 40 (eg Etienne Daho).

Glad to see some 10,0000Hz the Legend love.

this was always my favorite french bonnie raitt in space track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsyGKD-G3I0

I will allow that "Bibi the Dog" is kind of terrible. The line is pretty thin with stuff like this.

Ah no this is great! Not sure about the ELO/Air comparison but more like Daft Punk if they had done the last one right ( yeah. I wasn't a fan) with extra cheese and neon.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKmv0Z0WsAU-IZ0.jpg

I am 15 seconds into this and my initial reaction is that I do not listen to M83 for this

Yeah, file under the category of "You know that thing we do well that you like so much? Well, we're not going to do it, nyah!"

Change Is Good! Change Is Good!

not always

Maybe if you're David Bowie or Bob Dylan, and even they could suck for a decade straight.

xpost

the first three songs sound to me like Cut Copy doing a good impersonation of the terrible Air songs

Nothing to dispel the impression that M83 is a total hack who's lucked out with a couple of pretty epics (Couleurs/that 'to die with the sun' one)?

I'm liking this a lot. After five years of struggling to feel anything about Hurry Up We're Dreaming, it's nice to have an M83 album I can enjoy on my own terms.

Enjoyed a few songs on the 2nd half of the album. Many I couldn't finish - they annoyed me that much. Unfortunate record.

Nothing to dispel the impression that M83 is a total hack who's lucked out with a couple of pretty epics (Couleurs/that 'to die with the sun' one)?

― And the cry rang out all o'er the town / Good Heavens! Tay is down (imago), lundi 11 avril 2016 20:07

I totally agree with this. I liked some tracks on "Sat=Youth" but almost everything else I have heard from that guy was not only bad but horrible to me !
I was curious following the first reviews and have given this new album a try and it's... vile.

GREAT record. I've been listening to the first track over and over.

Also,

a total hack who's lucked out with a couple of pretty epics

Someone who can make pretty epics isn't a *total* hack though, right?

imo the last album felt like a gorgeous environment that housed maybe three total songs. this feels like the inverse of that

I love the first few m83 albums, and Midnight City seemed like an excellent pop fluke. i wouldn't call this guy a hack; I think he got more lucky than expected recently though.

And when you get lucky, you end up producing an album full of French wedding music.

Or a Loverboy album.

There is a certain type of Breakfast Club-inspired melodrama that M83 excels at; the further they move away from that, the less I like them.

caveat: I only started paying attention circa Saturdays = Youth and that's very clearly my favorite out of what I've heard

i used to like their videos. in that smiths/belle & sebastian kinda way. like they had a pretty well thought-out aesthetic.

the stuff i've heard from this sounds like 80's retro from like 5 or 10 years ago. from france.

I kept thinking of Sebastien Tellier when I was listening to Junk. He did this kind of thing a whole lot better on Sexuality and My God Is Blue. I do like some of M83's previous albums, especially Saturdays = Youth but Gonzalez is nowhere near the songwriter that Tellier is.

I love the Tatu vibe emanating from "Go!". What a beautiful plastic euphoric vibe. If this is the sound of a hack then i can't wait to hear what else he comes up with.

Also - i grew up watching TV in the 80s and I really am not hearing these sit-com music signifiers all the critics are going on about.

Most of the sitcom signifiers come from Moon Crystal, which to me sounds more like a cross between Bill Withers' Lovely Day and the Hill Street Blues theme.

my initial reaction is that I do not listen to M83 for this

pretty much my first thought.

I like "Moon Crystal"

Tellier comparison is OTM, and weirdly the songs sung in French are among the better ones. "Moon Crystal" is also VG. I have a feeling if I caned this album, I'd grow to love it. Not sure yet if I want to give it the necessary time though.

critics are mentioning "sitcom signifiers" bc anthony gonzalez explicitly referenced "80s sitcoms" as an inspiration

I like this album a lot more than his previous stuff. Just checked to see if anyone had made comparisons between this album and that disappointing Aeroplane album from a few years ago, and they had, and it was me in 2012. This is a better proposition but you can tell both bands had listened to a lot of shitty French marriage songs.

For the Kids > Solitude > The Wizard is such a great run of songs.

So ... mission successful and no one really gives a shit about this album? Or is this on heavy rotation in the world's last remaining record stores?

This, Radiohead and latest Autechre my fave new album listens at the moment

lately I've been wondering if the Diplo dolphin sound was actually invented by M83 on Midnight City

i kind of gave up on m83 after dead cities but there is a local college radio DJ who plays a lot of m83 during her sets and every time i listen it sounds so good

saturdays will always be classic, "Coleurs" is a huge stand-out

yes i will always look back upon that album fondly

this track from junk is tops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs3Wki_uYzQ

Coleurs takes a simple idea (every four cycles, add in an extra element, repeat for a long time), and does it to perfection. Wish the rest of the album was even half as good.

Their big single sucks, you know.

it was a weird single choice, both Claudia Lewis and Steve McQueen are so much better!

come on now, that is a great single, lyrics are innocuous and since when is there anything wrong with a sax solo? I remember when it came out, it was exhilerating!

sundfor track is classic and i'll always have time for Saturdays which clearly influenced Chvrches and IAM

also the rockets song is pure kate bush pastiche done right

Worst song ever? This is nonsense and I’ll go listen to midnight city instead.

IAM?

iamamiwhoami now known as ionnalee, purveyor of synth pop excellence.

midnight city rules

correct!

Searched, but didn't find mention of Team Ghost, Nicolas Fromageau's band after leaving M83 in 2004. Only own the two 2010 EPs, but they're great. Team Ghost did a remix of "Midnight City" back in 2011.

So this guy really (intentionally?) shot himself in the foot with that "Junk" album, didn't he? Big breakthrough in 2011, five years for that follow-up in 2016, which seemed to hurt the band's popularity. Three years later and I didn't even know he released something new a couple of months ago, a synthy instrumental album inspired by synth movie scores. Which, if I searched correctly, literally comes up only once in an ILX search. Mission accomplished, Anthony Gonzalez?

Answering my own question: yes, he seems to be going for a hard restore and reset.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvgvx5/m83-anthony-gonzales-interview-new-album-dsvii-midnight-city

I like this new record a lot more than most of the stuff he's done over the past decade+

Yeah that new one is actually pretty great and so much better than Junk. I wouldn't mind if he kept going on in this direction.

Listening to my two Team Ghost eps again, and really think anyone not enjoying current M83 would dig this side of the old split. Am going to hunt up the full albums, since these EPs are hitting the same buttons as Before the Dawn Heals Us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P47STNaFVuc

at any time when ILM was talking about M83, I, had not heard the song Midnight City. Yet in the past oh I don't know 3 years I heard it, heralded by that hectoring synth line…and that shit stayed with me! It appears to have become a standard since…

it;s like Billie Eilish was in the video or some shit…

forgot how rad Junk is, felt as open and haunted as ever tonight. hoping to get to Fantasy tomorrow.

"Oceans Niagara" played loud is quite a thing. up there with "Kim & Jessie" and "Teen Angst" for me.

"Kool Nuit" also very cool

I like this album. It's kind of crazy he's been releasing stuff for so long.

okay if there's a song that is reminiscent of Kim & Jessie (probably my all time fav M83 tune), I'm interested. I hated Junk so much I practically stopped listening to this dude's music entirely

yeah, I really disliked Junk but I also feel like one of the few people that really loved DSVII so who knows. haven't had a chance to get to Fantasy yet.

it's pretty good!

Finally getting around to Fantasy and it's kind of boring? I mean, sonically it's a massive improvement on Junk and it hits the right mood, but it also kind of feels like just going through the M83 motions. I don't know, it just made me want to go back to the earlier albums instead.

disappointing, and yes wanted to make me go to the catalog instead