:: Track Listing

1. Birds
2. Unrecorded
3. Run Into Flowers
4. In Church
5. America
6. On a White Lake Near, a Green Mountain
7. Noise
8. Be Wild
9. Cyborg
10. 0078h
11. Gone
12. Beauties Can Die

:: Record Review

M83

Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts
(Gooom; 2003)

Rating: 91%
Combined Rating: 86%


Those who know music need only say three little words these days to define shoegaze rock: My Bloody Valentine. If you hear their name getting dropped a bit, and you do, it's because they wholly aced an aesthetic that would be employed by countless other bands to imitative, often unfortunately ridiculous effect. And then of course, there's Kevin Shields' guitar, which he managed to convert, sonically, into an F14 turbo-booster or something in his songs.

And after seeing so many imitators of MBV, and then countless others who dipped their toe into MBV's aesthetic, I decided, flat out, that there was nothing to be done - no one would ever nail shoegaze like they did. It just seemed like no one had the vision. And of course...I was wrong. Enter M83.

They're French, and I know we're supposed to hate the French, but I have three things that persuade me to not just tolerate the French, but love the French. Two of them are girls from my trip, and the third is this album. Which I bought on the trip as well, so Europe is fucking awesome.

But to get to the point, this is feedback-infused, synth-drenched, guitar rung, sampled explosive beauty like nothing else. Don't get me wrong; I admire MBV as much as anyone else. But where they drenched their noise in soups of feedback, M83 let killer melodies and hooks and crescendos of lovely noise shine in their own right, expertly producing and organizing their sounds so as to make a terrifically unified album of almost non-stop beauty. Yet their refinement is most evident in their understanding of how to maximize the number of hair-raising moments while keeping them all precious. Nothing is so disappointing as an album that might be great if it didn't try to be so overblown and magnificent, but instead crumples under its own weight. M83, with a little bit of bombast, but more of a pure joy for sound, don't overdo it, and that tiniest bit of restraint keeps this album fucking awesome instead of damn draining. Peter Gabriel could use a few lessons from these guys.

The stuff is heavily electro organic, but with more organic than electro, which is for me, a matching-up with my personal preference. Synths are everywhere here, but keyboards are easily identified, as are guitars, and bass. Drums tend to be from drum machines, but I certainly can't complain - they work flawlessly. And to boot, there's also a good deal of variety; songs fade a little and then explode, sometimes they start off with killer hooks and then fall into warm synths with eerie vocal samples, like in "Run Into Flowers," one of the standout tracks on an album full of them. It's a track that serves as the initial vault into the sphere that M83 occupies alone, and the rest of the tracks, all expertly done and meticulous, will make you realize that M83's sphere is a timeless one of astounding sound that seems purely ageless.

Like MBV, there are a couple scant times when the album begins to blur the tiniest bit, when one feedback noise becomes somewhat indistinct from that in another song. But despite a few lulls and the just plain fucking weird intro track, this album is in its own stratosphere. Certainly one of the year's best so far. Amir Nezar :: 12 July 2003 |