Professor Yeti

I can recall my first experience listening to M83 pretty well. It was late at night as I was doing work for a class last fall, and I was looking around the residential network for some interesting iTunes playlists to listen to. Having read good reviews from back when it came out as an import-only release on Gooom at the end of 2003, I was fairly excited to finally get a chance to hear Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. I didn’t blast it on my headphones, because I needed to concentrate at the time, but I remember being overwhelmed even at a low volume by the sonic atmosphere, the synthesized textures, and the bittersweet beauty of M83’s sound. After obtaining a copy of the album myself, I continued to prize it for those same reasons, and thus was not surprised to see the “band” (the only official member is Anthony Gonzalez) touring with Ulrich Schnauss this spring. I made sure to take in the show when they stopped at the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis.

I’d only really heard one song by Ulrich Schnauss before his opening set, and I think “On My Own” is still my favorite. He had a fairly thrilling final minute or two on stage, but other than that I probably would have been just as happy listening at home. I thought about buying his record, but it came out two years ago, which didn’t inspire a sense of urgency in me, and there were other things closer to the top of my near-infinite shopping list anyway.

It became apparent over the course of the show that I didn’t know what to expect from M83, because I assumed the set would mainly consist of Anthony Gonzalez standing at a synthesizer orchestrating the collage of electronic sounds, sort of like Ulrich Schnauss with his laptop, etc. Boy, was I ever wrong.

M83 is touring as a four-piece band, which allows them to actually play a high percentage of each song live, with only a few pre-recorded loops here and there. The bass was loud and throbbing and at times overpowering. Gonzalez sometimes played lead guitar and other times stood at the keyboard. He supplied vocals on a few tracks, but the band also made use of a spoken-word recording, “Car Chase Terror” from their new album Before the Dawn Heals Us, of a woman telling a story about being scared inside her car with her little girl, because Satan was coming to get them or something. It could easily have seemed pretentious or bizarre, but the narration worked really well to sustain the haunting mood the band created between a couple of pieces near the middle of the set. The drummer had, by the end, become predictably ferocious, but I don’t think anyone in the audience was complaining. The main guitarist, well, he played the guitar with a strap over his shoulder most of the time, but he also used a little handheld fan (at least that’s what I think it was) to hit the strings and get a sound most would only attempt with a pedal. I think at one point while he was playing the guitar laid flat on a table, which he did a few times, he had attached a screwdriver to the strings on the neck so it swung up and down for a extended reverberating tone.

Often compared to My Bloody Valentine, the band, like Anthony Gonzalez in the studio, seemed to spend a lot of time figuring out how to produce the exact sounds they wanted, and they did a solid job of it, but by far the most powerful parts of their show were the frequent and enjoyable jamfests. As I mentioned above, although their first album does include some louder and more abrasive sections, I still wasn’t expecting anything like the delicious pummellings M83 handed out throughout the evening. I’d previously thought of Anthony Gonzalez’s music as fitting fairly well under the “indie electronic” label, but the prominent guitars and acoustic drumming seemed to suit it, so maybe M83 is more of a post-rock outift than I’d thought. Explosions in the Sky is the closest point of comparison I know personally, but I’d imagine Mogwai provide a similar live experience. As you’ll no doubt understand if you’ve attended such a show, the only thing better than getting completely blown away by the force of the band onstage is the anticipation of that moment, counting down the measures and the beats as if to a rocket launch, waiting to have your thoughts reorganized, your fillings rattled, and your cares casually eliminated by the crushingly gorgeous riffs and the restorative onslaught of the drums.

They played for what seemed like close to an hour and a half, but the encore, which consisted of a pretty and slowly building anthem which was followed by the band going into full-on assault mode for one last hurrah, probably would have still counted as a better-than-average indie rock show all by itself. Gonzalez kept apologizing in his thick French accent for their numerous unspecified technical problems, but the audience didn’t seem to notice any. If this was a poor show, I can’t even begin to imagine what they sound like on a good night.

Andy Slabaugh (http://andyslabaugh.blogspot.com) plans, upon his graduation from college, to avoid a career for as long as possible.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 at 7:14 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.