M83?

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."