Over a decade on from the discharge of his breakthrough sixth album ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming’ and its world megahit ‘Midnight Metropolis’, M83’s Anthony Gonzalez seems to nonetheless be dwelling in that specific music’s shadow. “It was nearly an excessive amount of for me, you already know?” he instructed NME about its overwhelming success earlier this 12 months. “Perhaps I didn’t deserve it, and perhaps I’m only a small indie artist that desires to make small indie albums.”
Gonzalez, who began out as an esoteric Paris-based digital producer, was propelled by the success of that 2011 report right into a mainstream he was by no means fairly ready for. The next 12 years have been considerably of a course correction: he lastly launched the messy and vague follow-up ‘Junk’ in 2016, whereas his ninth studio album ‘Fantasy’ arrives as one other try for the producer to reclaim his narrative. “All people needs to earn more money, be extra profitable, have extra followers,” Gonzalez instructed NME of his headspace whereas creating ‘Fantasy’. “The extra I see that on the earth, the much less I need to achieve success.”
Whereas he could have made a deliberate flip away from commercialism, the songs on this newest M83 album stay sugary, dreamlike and fully welcoming. Impressed by the ‘80s shoegaze sounds he grew up on and the immersive worlds of movie soundtracks and online game music, ‘Fantasy’ is a big, fizzing world of sound that’s designed to really feel as awe-inspiring as attainable.
From the brand new wave of ‘Amnesia’ to energy ballad ‘Laura’, whereas additionally taking within the ambient wash of ‘Sunny Boy Half 2’, the off-the-wall weirdness of seven-minute nearer ‘Dismemberment Bureau’ and ‘Radar, Far, Gone’’s delicate acoustic plucking, Gonzalez has made probably the most far-reaching album of his profession: a report that’s solely freed from compromise, and all of the extra gratifying for it.
In opposition to the artist’s artistic needs, although, there’s a lead single right here that steals the present. Awe-inspiring first monitor ‘Oceans Niagara’ is M83 at his dazzling greatest, creating layer upon layer of monumental shoegaze noise. “I simply need to speak about forgotten worlds, goals and magic potions, and attempt to hold my teenage years alive,” he instructed NME. A music as gleaming as that is highly effective sufficient to have any dream you want projected onto it.
Although the album will get just a little messier and extra unfocused from this level, ‘Oceans Niagara’ factors to a superbly shiny future for the M83 venture. Regardless of Gonzalez’s makes an attempt to tug away from success, his standing as a cult hero seems safe. His penchant for an earworm — intentional or not — stays plain.
Particulars
Launch date: March 17
Document label: Different Suns
