M83: Electro Never Sounded SoRock

Mon 18th Apr, 2005 in Features

M83’s Anthony Gonzales is quietly nervous. In two days he’s due to play London’s Brixton Academy, a majestic old building with a 4500 capacity, supporting Interpol. “I am very excited, but very scared,” he lilts in a gentle French accent. “It is very big.” Somehow you don’t think the venue’s size will trouble him. The sound of M83 was meant to fill huge rooms: lush orchestral walls of electronic murmuring straining against pounding drums and jagged riffs, overblown extravagance like a brilliant night sky dotted with shooting stars.

The epic nature of M83’s sound is strange when you consider the band’s decidedly rock origins. Gonzales started playing guitar when he was 13, and at 14 got together with his friend Nicolas Fromageau. “We created a noisy rock band, like Sonic Youth,” Gonzales remembers. The French duo went on this way for a while, but they felt constrained by the traditional guitar/bass/drums format. “I wanted to discover new sounds, so I decided to try electronic music. I bought a keyboard and samplers and started experimenting.” They changed their name to M83 (after a distant galaxy) and recorded their self-titled debut album. But it wasn’t until follow-up Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts that people sat up and took notice.

Though released on tiny French electronic label Gooom, people all over the world started whispering about the pair and the album where My Bloody Valentine writhes up against Air. The heightened interest took the band on the road including the US, which forced them to reconfigure their keyboard-soaked tunes. “The tour for Dead Cities, we played with drum and bass and guitar, it was very rock and noisy on stage, like a real rock band.”

An epiphany of sorts was had, and the band changed direction again, this time toning down the electronic layers in favour of a more acoustic sound. “I wanted to do electronic music with a real rock band, a more human sound, incorporating more vocals, more pop. Something very produced, something very much like a wall of sound, the elements of love songs, a real huge sound.” However, for all of this steadfast vision Gonzales went into the third album alone – Fromageau left to pursue his own band.

Before The Dawn Heals Us is laden with sweeping soundscapes and desperate melodrama, the score to an angst-filled motion picture. The cinematic feel of the album is something Gonzales anticipated. “I wanted to create a record like a story, like a movie with a beginning, middle and end. I’ve been watching a lot of movies so perhaps it has influenced somehow.” He rattles off a list of French and American indie flick heroes including David Lynch, clearly enraptured by film.

You can hear it most in Car Chase Terror. Chirping crickets give way to a frantic woman’s rambling monologue before synths and guitars crash in and the terror intensifies. “I wanted to create a movie scene taken from noir films. My brother wrote the lyrics and the dialogue, and I asked Kate to do the spoken word on the track.” Kate is American theatre actress Kate Moran living in Paris whom Gonzales met after seeing her in a play. “I went to see her on stage and I was so amazed I asked her to make this song with me.”

Does he have a wish list of who he wants to work with? Gonzales laughs, sighs. “Of course, but I have too much things to tell you – maybe Brian Eno, I am a huge fan of his.” It is charming to hear him gush about Slowdive, Bloc Party, Sonic Youth and Secret Machines when most would assume his influences would be of the electro persuasion. “I am not a huge fan of electronic music; the electronic music I listen to is ambient music. I am coming from a rock perspective, I listen to rock, I search for rock. I consider the music I play rock, not electronica.” The noisecore boy at heart remains.