M83
There’s always been a sense of the cinematic to the sounds that Anthony Gonzalez and his cast of collaborators in the M83 project have come up with. That’s putting aside their brilliant scores for Gonzalez’s brother Yann’s films You and the Night and Knife + Heart, or even their gutsy 2005 attempt to rescore the stargate sequence of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with “Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun.” Any M83 album in your headphones can turn the most banal of endeavors into a John Hughes montage, with all the drama one could hope for.
Of the number of blunders that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made over its years of existence, ignoring Gonzalez’s collaboration with Norwegian vocalist Susanne Sundfør and arranger, orchestrator and co-composer Joseph Trapanese on the theme song to 2013’s Oblivion is one of the most jaw-dropping. “Oblivion” illustrates everything that Gonzalez excels at: cinematic sweep, memorable but ethereal hooks and a pervasive sense that the drama behind the programming is all too real and deeply felt. Even the most fervent of rockists can’t help but get swept away by the deep emotional resonance that comes from the chord progressions and meshes of sound that have defined the M83 project over the past 20-some-odd years, and that is a major achievement.
This year’s M83 album Fantasy does an impeccable job taking the listener on a journey — understanding the sense memory that certain kinds of sounds evoke in a listener, never settling for pastiche or cut-and-paste pop, but crafting soundscapes that feel like a memory slipped out of time. This is especially true of “Amnesia” and then later on with the one-two punch of “Laura” and “Sunny Boy.”
When firing on all cylinders, M83 offers the kind of endorphin spike you get from finding a blanket that kept you warm as a child, lit up with the most sordid neon glow. One wall-of-synth swoop and your brain swims in a memory that may not have happened to you, but still comforts and caresses the pleasure centers. Saturdays = Youth isn’t just the title of M83’s 2008 U.S. breakthrough album, it’s also a philosophy that consistently animates their work, exploring the frequencies and waveforms that trigger whatever synapses are in charge of potential, of possibility, of hope.
There are times when an artist taps right into the subconscious of a moment — Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” did it in the early days of mash-up culture — and it’s from these kinds of happy synchronicities that something truly expansive and genre-defining can happen. In 2011, M83’s “Midnight City” became a benevolent virus of nighttime heat that, despite a relatively low tempo of 105 beats per minute, conveys an immediate energy; it has a pulse that seems like so much more. You could spend an hour just tripping out on the many mash-ups of “Midnight City” that have proliferated in the intervening decade, with Rihanna, Taylor Swift, INXS, The Beastie Boys, Men at Work and Queen all finding their way into M83’s soundscape and blending in perfectly.
So M83’s upcoming visit to Marathon Music Works feels like a whole heaping lot of possibilities for the kind of electronic majesty that we as a city don’t get nearly often enough. Gonzalez & Co. can take you from the disco into outer space with a chord change, so there’s no doubt that the course of their set on Tuesday is going to cover a lot of ground. But know this: You have to go back to Jackson Browne’s “Late for the Sky” to find a song that elicits full-tilt weeping fits like those brought on by “Un Nouveau Soleil” from You and the Night. We’re incredibly lucky that M83 uses their sound and sense for good; cosmic therapy for the shaken and the disturbed.
Below, enjoy a playlist to guide you through the emotional landscape of M83.
