M83
Before The Dawn Heals Us

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What their label says...

A dreamy lucious piece of electronica...
Ask most people here about M83 and they will start complaining about the state of our motorways. Music aficionados however will start to wax lyrical about a French duo famed for electronica LPs that are anything but electronic. Indeed their most distinguishing feature is to make their work sound humane and organic, painting pretty little strokes on an electronic canvas. I couldn’t get into their last LP, Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts even though most critics had creamed themselves over it. I just thought the whole thing was schizophrenic, like Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau couldn’t decide what they wanted to get out of the album. I had it on heavy rotation for a while but then more interesting things appeared and it’s been gathering dust on my CD rack ever since.

But oh my gosh would you believe it M83 come back with a 2005 sucker-punch and blow me away with the brilliance of their latest long player, Before the Dawn Heals Us. It’s immediacy is very apparent from the first track and I think it is far more accessible. Most of the tracks are fairly languorous, with sumptuous layer upon layer of music that never make the album too heavy or bloated, and remind me of Boards of Canada or Spacemen 3. I don’t think the rockier tracks such as Don’t Save Us From The Flames top the real slow burner gems such as A Guitar And A Heart but there are a couple of notable exceptions. Vocals are minimal and usually treated as ambient sounds except in Chase Car Terror, which I guess, is supposed to be mood music but does not really appeal. The whole album has a suitably epic feel to it not too dissimilar to Mercury Rev’s latest LP and once again feels very different from the bleep bleep computer whizzkids making music in their bedroom. I would whole-heartedly recommend the purchase...