M83
(2001-Present, Ages 16 and Up)
4/6/18
|
|
|
I discovered Owl City on my car radio in the UMD parking lot. About a year or so later, I discovered this music project at UMD as well, this time while I was at a vending table in the hallway outside the bookstore, selling copies of The Roaring Muse, the official magazine of UMD’s Literary Guild. Many of the other vendors advertising their own respective clubs, charities, and causes would often play music on their laptops, presumably to alleviate the boredom or, more likely, to grab people’s attention—like mine, for instance. On the other side of one of the pillars that stood behind my table, another table was playing the chorus of a song I was unfamiliar with. Truth be told, it did sound a little annoying at first, being mixed with the hustle and bustle of students and teachers and all the other noises of the campus. Even so, the series of notes rhythmically punctuating the air in a sort of high-pitched staccato was too intriguing to ignore. I decided to take a quick break from my own vending duties to go to the table and ask the boy there about the song’s title and its artist, which he very kindly provided. As soon as I got home I was able to listen to the song properly. And I have to say, in retrospect, college couldn’t have been a more appropriate time or place to hear this music for the first time—except for high school, maybe.
Though originally a duo featuring Nicholas Fromageau, today M83’s sole official member is its creator, Anthony Gonzalez, a vocalist, song-writer, and record producer from Antibes, France. After an injury at the age of 14 left him unable to play football, an interest that he shared with his family, his parents bought him a guitar, encouraging him to develop a keen interest in music. He would go on to form the project M83 with Fromageau three years later, though the latter would ultimately leave it 2009 in order to pursue his own music career. The band is named after Messier 83, one of the sky’s closest and brightest spiral galaxies; so close, in fact, that it is fully capable of being seen with binoculars. Located approximately 15 million light-years away from earth in the constellation Hydra, it is also known in the New General Catalogue in Nebulae and Clusters of Stars as NGC 5236, as well as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, due to its resemblance to the Pinwheel Galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major (a.k.a. the Great Bear).
And now that I’ve thoroughly bored you all with that random astronomy lesson, back to the music!
Inspired by such bands as My Bloody Valentine, Pink Floyd, and Tangerine Dream, M83’s electronic sound is laced with a distinct 1980’s vibe, a combination of contemporary pop and the dream pop of the same decade. The aforementioned song, “Midnight City”, has been featured not only in a variety of shows, films, and commercials, both in Europe and North America, but even in the 2012 UEFA European Championship and the London 2012 Olympic Games. Moreover, North American listeners will likely recognize M83’s songs from many films of the early 2010’s, including, but not limited to: the entire soundtrack of Oblivion; “I Need You” in Divergent; “Wait”, in The Fault in our Stars; and “Another Wave from You” and “Outro” in the remake of The Gambler.
Having first heard “Midnight City” and its corresponding album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (the sixth), and from there, its fifth, Saturdays = Youth, and its seventh, Junk, I had initially become much more familiar with M83’s later music, ranging from 2008-2016 as of the time I write this. But as I listened to the first four albums, ranging from 2001-2007, I began to notice an increasingly apparent change in style. Starting with Saturdays, from a lyrical and rhythmic standpoint, the songs feel very developed and structured. In contrast, Gonzalez’s earlier pieces sound more like experimental demos. From backdrops of random voices or other sound effects, to a lack of precise musical arrangement or direction, this era of M83 is marked by a more definitive ambience, ambiguous, spontaneous, intuitive.
Now, I don’t know if Gonzalez intended this, and I might be reading too much into it, but this change in style could reflect a process of personal reflection and maturation through music. More to the point, I think the aesthetic and thematic approach of M83 as a whole can be summed up with one word: teenager. Dreams, freedom, love, loneliness, melancholy, nostalgia: Gonzalez touches upon many of the feelings young people long to understand and the questions they long to answer, with songs that masterfully illustrate the nature of youthful rebellion and imagination. To begin with, the band’s distinct vocal style involves lyrics often being sung in a deliberately soft and whispery voice on top of much louder instruments, a figurative expression of a restless, artistic soul trying to find meaning in that ugly, beautiful chaos we call life, in ways neither right nor wrong. One may remember and lament a past life now gone, on “Sunday Night 1987”:
Lost memories
Faded pictures
Can you drive me back
To this very moment
Julia
Alexander
Where did you all go?
Love
Chase life in order to unearth its secrets, declaring “We Own the Sky”:
Each shade of blue
Is kept in our eyes
Keep blowing and lightning
Because we own the sky
Secrets from the winds
Burnt stars crying
Struggle through the pain and confusion it inflicts, in the aptly named “Teen Angst”:
How fast we burn
How fast we cry
The more we learn
The more we die
The more we learn
The more we cry
How fast we burn
How fast we die
I hear the planet crying now,
I hear the planet crying now...
Or hit it head on in a spiritual blaze of glory, like the daredevil narrator of “Steve McQueen”:
I woke up stronger than ever.
Driven by big waves of fire.
To run and yell all the way.
Nothing can hurt me today.
There's a magic inside.
Just waiting to burst out.
The world is a goldmine.
That will melt tomorrow.
I realize how pretentious all this might sound, my own lofty words not helping, I’m sure. But I prefer to think of it as poetic. As I listen to this, I often imagine kids sitting cross-legged on their beds or under trees, writing stories or other deeply personal thoughts in their notebooks, just as I did a lot during my high school years. One of the more unique features of M83’s songs is the inclusion of brief monologues by younger narrators in between choruses. These can range from childish and whimsical to introspective and poignant. In “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” (Rough translation: “Tell Me a Story”), a child imagines how much more fun life would be we all turned into frogs and became “the biggest group of friends the world has ever seen / Jumping and laughing forever”:
. . . And after you finish laughing
It's time to turn into a frog yourself
Its very funny to be a frog
You can dive into the water
And cross the rivers, and the oceans
And you can jump all the time, and everywhere
Do you wanna play with me?
We can be a whole group of friends
A whole group of frogs
Jumping into the streets
Jumping into the planets
Climbing buildings
Swimming in the lakes, and in the bathtubs . . .
And the eponymous “Graveyard Girl” feels more at home in the darkness than she ever could in the sunlight, the cemetery her sanctuary, the “wise and silent” stones her true teachers:
“I'm gonna jump the walls and run
I wonder if they'll miss me?
I won't miss them
The cemetery is my home
I want to be a part of it
Invisible even to the night
Then I'll read poetry to the stones
Maybe one day I could be one of them...
Wise and silent
Waiting for someone to love me
Waiting for someone to kiss me
I'm fifteen years old
And I feel it's already too late to live
Don't you?”
There is one other intriguing feature that aids this trend: not counting instrumental pieces, very, VERY few songs ever drop their respective titles. These can be comprised of short, single couplets, like “You, Appearing”, or they can be full anthems, like “Intro”. Regardless, this lack of direct referencing between a song and its title adds a new layer of depth and mystery to their meanings, just as any good poem does. It also invites us to ponder the spirit and mindset of the writer, like how we may ponder the universe and what our place in it will ultimately become.
It’s your face
Where are we?
Save me
____________
We carry on, carry on
Follow us, we are one
The battle's fought, the deed is done
Our silver hum runs deep and strong
Hand to the heart, lips to the horn
We can save, we can be reborn
Hand on my breast, I'll keep you warm
Hail!
As I’m sure many will testify—myself included—the teen years comprise arguably one of the most turbulent points in a person’s life, a time when we wonder whether to leave behind all that has brought us unadulterated joy while agonizing how to face the inevitability of our future. On the other hand, it’s also a time to embrace the world, through self-reflection and realizing our full potential. As nostalgically retro as it is contemporarily visceral, M83 is Gonzalez’ sonic love letter to that immortal era and all that it stands for.
CREDITS:
All images, audio, and links belong to their respective owners; no copyright infringement is intended.
MAIN THEME:
“The Call” - Briand Morrison and Roxann Berglund
Though originally a duo featuring Nicholas Fromageau, today M83’s sole official member is its creator, Anthony Gonzalez, a vocalist, song-writer, and record producer from Antibes, France. After an injury at the age of 14 left him unable to play football, an interest that he shared with his family, his parents bought him a guitar, encouraging him to develop a keen interest in music. He would go on to form the project M83 with Fromageau three years later, though the latter would ultimately leave it 2009 in order to pursue his own music career. The band is named after Messier 83, one of the sky’s closest and brightest spiral galaxies; so close, in fact, that it is fully capable of being seen with binoculars. Located approximately 15 million light-years away from earth in the constellation Hydra, it is also known in the New General Catalogue in Nebulae and Clusters of Stars as NGC 5236, as well as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, due to its resemblance to the Pinwheel Galaxy found in the constellation Ursa Major (a.k.a. the Great Bear).
And now that I’ve thoroughly bored you all with that random astronomy lesson, back to the music!
Inspired by such bands as My Bloody Valentine, Pink Floyd, and Tangerine Dream, M83’s electronic sound is laced with a distinct 1980’s vibe, a combination of contemporary pop and the dream pop of the same decade. The aforementioned song, “Midnight City”, has been featured not only in a variety of shows, films, and commercials, both in Europe and North America, but even in the 2012 UEFA European Championship and the London 2012 Olympic Games. Moreover, North American listeners will likely recognize M83’s songs from many films of the early 2010’s, including, but not limited to: the entire soundtrack of Oblivion; “I Need You” in Divergent; “Wait”, in The Fault in our Stars; and “Another Wave from You” and “Outro” in the remake of The Gambler.
Having first heard “Midnight City” and its corresponding album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (the sixth), and from there, its fifth, Saturdays = Youth, and its seventh, Junk, I had initially become much more familiar with M83’s later music, ranging from 2008-2016 as of the time I write this. But as I listened to the first four albums, ranging from 2001-2007, I began to notice an increasingly apparent change in style. Starting with Saturdays, from a lyrical and rhythmic standpoint, the songs feel very developed and structured. In contrast, Gonzalez’s earlier pieces sound more like experimental demos. From backdrops of random voices or other sound effects, to a lack of precise musical arrangement or direction, this era of M83 is marked by a more definitive ambience, ambiguous, spontaneous, intuitive.
Now, I don’t know if Gonzalez intended this, and I might be reading too much into it, but this change in style could reflect a process of personal reflection and maturation through music. More to the point, I think the aesthetic and thematic approach of M83 as a whole can be summed up with one word: teenager. Dreams, freedom, love, loneliness, melancholy, nostalgia: Gonzalez touches upon many of the feelings young people long to understand and the questions they long to answer, with songs that masterfully illustrate the nature of youthful rebellion and imagination. To begin with, the band’s distinct vocal style involves lyrics often being sung in a deliberately soft and whispery voice on top of much louder instruments, a figurative expression of a restless, artistic soul trying to find meaning in that ugly, beautiful chaos we call life, in ways neither right nor wrong. One may remember and lament a past life now gone, on “Sunday Night 1987”:
Lost memories
Faded pictures
Can you drive me back
To this very moment
Julia
Alexander
Where did you all go?
Love
Chase life in order to unearth its secrets, declaring “We Own the Sky”:
Each shade of blue
Is kept in our eyes
Keep blowing and lightning
Because we own the sky
Secrets from the winds
Burnt stars crying
Struggle through the pain and confusion it inflicts, in the aptly named “Teen Angst”:
How fast we burn
How fast we cry
The more we learn
The more we die
The more we learn
The more we cry
How fast we burn
How fast we die
I hear the planet crying now,
I hear the planet crying now...
Or hit it head on in a spiritual blaze of glory, like the daredevil narrator of “Steve McQueen”:
I woke up stronger than ever.
Driven by big waves of fire.
To run and yell all the way.
Nothing can hurt me today.
There's a magic inside.
Just waiting to burst out.
The world is a goldmine.
That will melt tomorrow.
I realize how pretentious all this might sound, my own lofty words not helping, I’m sure. But I prefer to think of it as poetic. As I listen to this, I often imagine kids sitting cross-legged on their beds or under trees, writing stories or other deeply personal thoughts in their notebooks, just as I did a lot during my high school years. One of the more unique features of M83’s songs is the inclusion of brief monologues by younger narrators in between choruses. These can range from childish and whimsical to introspective and poignant. In “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” (Rough translation: “Tell Me a Story”), a child imagines how much more fun life would be we all turned into frogs and became “the biggest group of friends the world has ever seen / Jumping and laughing forever”:
. . . And after you finish laughing
It's time to turn into a frog yourself
Its very funny to be a frog
You can dive into the water
And cross the rivers, and the oceans
And you can jump all the time, and everywhere
Do you wanna play with me?
We can be a whole group of friends
A whole group of frogs
Jumping into the streets
Jumping into the planets
Climbing buildings
Swimming in the lakes, and in the bathtubs . . .
And the eponymous “Graveyard Girl” feels more at home in the darkness than she ever could in the sunlight, the cemetery her sanctuary, the “wise and silent” stones her true teachers:
“I'm gonna jump the walls and run
I wonder if they'll miss me?
I won't miss them
The cemetery is my home
I want to be a part of it
Invisible even to the night
Then I'll read poetry to the stones
Maybe one day I could be one of them...
Wise and silent
Waiting for someone to love me
Waiting for someone to kiss me
I'm fifteen years old
And I feel it's already too late to live
Don't you?”
There is one other intriguing feature that aids this trend: not counting instrumental pieces, very, VERY few songs ever drop their respective titles. These can be comprised of short, single couplets, like “You, Appearing”, or they can be full anthems, like “Intro”. Regardless, this lack of direct referencing between a song and its title adds a new layer of depth and mystery to their meanings, just as any good poem does. It also invites us to ponder the spirit and mindset of the writer, like how we may ponder the universe and what our place in it will ultimately become.
It’s your face
Where are we?
Save me
____________
We carry on, carry on
Follow us, we are one
The battle's fought, the deed is done
Our silver hum runs deep and strong
Hand to the heart, lips to the horn
We can save, we can be reborn
Hand on my breast, I'll keep you warm
Hail!
As I’m sure many will testify—myself included—the teen years comprise arguably one of the most turbulent points in a person’s life, a time when we wonder whether to leave behind all that has brought us unadulterated joy while agonizing how to face the inevitability of our future. On the other hand, it’s also a time to embrace the world, through self-reflection and realizing our full potential. As nostalgically retro as it is contemporarily visceral, M83 is Gonzalez’ sonic love letter to that immortal era and all that it stands for.
CREDITS:
All images, audio, and links belong to their respective owners; no copyright infringement is intended.
MAIN THEME:
“The Call” - Briand Morrison and Roxann Berglund
All other tracks are by M83:
“Midnight City” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“I Guess I'm Floating” (from Before the Dawn Heals Us [2005])
“Night” (from M83 [2001])
“Birds” (from Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts [2003])
“Sunday Night 1987” (from Junk [2016])
“We Own the Sky” (from Saturdays = Youth [2008])
“Teen Angst” (from Before the Dawn Heals Us [2005])
“Steve McQueen” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“Graveyard Girl” (from Saturdays = Youth [2008])
“You, Appearing” (from Saturdays = Youth [2008])
“Intro” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun” (from Before the Dawn Heals Us [2005])
Download the full 15-minute episode here!
M83 on Wikipedia
M83's Official Website
Anthony Gonzalez's Official Facebook Page
M83's Official Facebook Page
M83's Official Twitter Page
M83's Official Myspace Page
M83's Official Instagram Page
M83's Official Youtube Channel
M83's Official Soundcloud Channel
Buy M83 on Itunes
Buy M83 on Amazon
Buy M83 on EBay
^^ Back to Music, Bands, and Other Creations of Sound
“Midnight City” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“I Guess I'm Floating” (from Before the Dawn Heals Us [2005])
“Night” (from M83 [2001])
“Birds” (from Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts [2003])
“Sunday Night 1987” (from Junk [2016])
“We Own the Sky” (from Saturdays = Youth [2008])
“Teen Angst” (from Before the Dawn Heals Us [2005])
“Steve McQueen” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“Graveyard Girl” (from Saturdays = Youth [2008])
“You, Appearing” (from Saturdays = Youth [2008])
“Intro” (from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [2011])
“Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun” (from Before the Dawn Heals Us [2005])
Download the full 15-minute episode here!
M83 on Wikipedia
M83's Official Website
Anthony Gonzalez's Official Facebook Page
M83's Official Facebook Page
M83's Official Twitter Page
M83's Official Myspace Page
M83's Official Instagram Page
M83's Official Youtube Channel
M83's Official Soundcloud Channel
Buy M83 on Itunes
Buy M83 on Amazon
Buy M83 on EBay
^^ Back to Music, Bands, and Other Creations of Sound