The tumultuous and disruptive decade since the onset and onslaught of the digital revolution has transformed not just the music industry, but has done a pretty neat job of changing music. As the synthesizer and the computer replaced the piano and the studio, people began to realize en mass that anyone could be a musician. For better or worse this is the state of affairs we find ourselves in as we scan the internet, sleuth the blogs and sites, dig through torrents looking for increasingly aggregate numbers of new music, new artists, new genres. I tend to think of it for the better, as the late 90s saw the traditional pillars of rock, pop and hip hop decaying and rotting from the inside out due to a void of creative contributions. The caveat to this situation and challenge to all potential contributors is how do you make yourself noticed? When every divergent genre and sub genre is constantly flooded with new content running the gambit along on all levels of quality and taste, what chance does an artist have beyond being innovative or spectacular. M83 does both; with Hurry up We're Dreaming, M83's Anthony Gonzalez creates an adventure that completely subverts and surpasses genre, even breaking free of the limitations on how music should be crafted, as dictated by things as blase as reality. With cutting edge modernity, coupled with a respectful talent for the classical- both in terms of instrumentation and the merits of the studio process- Dreaming is an album that seems future perfect and timeless all at once.
Gonzalez makes it immediately and enticingly apparent that this will not be an album defined or restrained by traditional and tangible barriers such as linearity, pacing, or thematics. In the expansive and dazzling depth of “Intro”, before Zola Jesus' commanding and celebratory voice kicks in, we hear a diminutive girl whisper, “we didn't need a real world, we didn't need a story... I knew you before you even existed”. Things like time and space are rendered meaningless here, Dreaming aims to exist where such concepts can't be accurately measured- in our dreams. Gonzalez has said he no longer wants to live in the real world, rather he would prefer to escape into the endless but stimulating void of our dreams. Here, story and structures, time and space, are nebulous and variable; and possibilities open up infinitely. This album codifies and embraces that sense of discovery and the wonders of the unknown. Instrumentation and arrangements are spacious and lush. Massive crescendos and dizzying dissents are common place to the point of being not just expected but unalienable, yet always introduced and handled in refreshing and creative ways. Synthesizers are purposed towards otherworldly and celestial hooks like the dazzling and potent beat of “Midnight City”, and the boisterous “Year One, One UFO”. Vocals and choirs, like those found in the bizarre and exciting melodic hook they form in “Ok Pal”, are heavily altered by modifiers and post production to ensure the album's ample background vocals carry the signature of something beyond human- alien and heavenly all at once. I hope the technical and evangelical implications of such a descriptor are not lost on people, for when do such concepts ever operate so beautifully together, as opposed to diametrically clashing. This paradigm is replicated in other ways like in the overtly artificial and crass 8-bit measures of “Another Wave From You”, beautifully and dutifully ferrying Gonzalez's demure and frail vocals along. More classical instruments, horns, piano, supplement this by adding an ever intensifying sense of grandeur, but only to some of the tracks.
Gonzalez aims to use the realm of dreams to surpass notions of the limits of things like scale and epic, to make things seem and sound bigger than should be possible, however he also directs this system of design and charisma towards the other end of the spectrum- towards the miniscule. He expertly crafts scores consisting of only the most elemental sounds, a slowly oscillating and humming synth beat that diffuses into a brief piano melody in “Where the Boats Go”, and makes it sound like it could stretch on forever, enveloping unfathomable stretches of the sound scape. It's as if Gonzalez proves once and for all that the entire spectrum of music is cyclical, not linear and that by distilling sound to it's most embryonic aspects the meaning and effects of the smallest sounds become intwined and affixed to the largest. With such a perspective and approach, simple 60 second interludes carry the weight and sentiment of symphonies. The way Gonzalez makes the simple and unassumingly tiny music mix and communicate with the intensity and bravado of the other end of the scale is a work of art. In “Wait”, we hear the most reserved and melancholy of tracks, aching and beautiful at first, slowly swell with energy and passion and you suddenly find yourself being bombarded by everything in M83's arsenal- sweeping horn sections, alien wails, complex and intimidating drum rhythms; It's pretty awe inspiring. However, elsewhere in “My Tears are Becoming a Sea”, Gonzalez again starts with something minimal and frail, perhaps tricking you into expecting another massive slow burn. Instead, with the passing of one single beat the song erupts, violently and magnificently with titanic and low octave synthesizers crashing against heavy bass and drum spines while another set of keyboards rises up against it all. With tracks like these and others- “Soon My Friend”, “Outro”, etc.- Gonzalez interprets things like scale and escalation in different ways, and for the most part to spectacular effect. The dichotomy of large and small, the way both ends of the scale converge and intersect to serve the same sense of scope and purpose is one of Dreaming's more impressive triumphs.
Not all songs are meant to be so commandingly intense, either through their size or their depth, and here in lies the purpose of the double album. Gonzalez takes advantage of his dreamscape environment by using ample amounts of space to spread out and segregate his multiple centrepieces. Many songs, such as “Where The Boats Go”, “When Will You Come Home?”, and “Fountains”, serve the function of preludes, interludes, and segues; not fully formed and distinctly purposed pieces, but rather there to form the fibres and makeup of Dreaming's cosmos. By spacing out the more, to speak dangerously normative here, important tracks, they create a sense of distance, and therefore travel. Such ideas easily and gracefully give way to discovery and wonderment; ideals that M83 excels in. Because many of the tracks never fully evolve into full pieces the album as a whole doesn't feel like a double album. Clocking in at just under 75 minutes, Dreaming may even feel a little short for a 22 song set. I don't mind, and I'm not entirely sure my mind could handle a full two hours of wandering through the emotionally challenging and draining tapestry that exists here. Did anybody ever even listen to Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness all the way through anyways? One way it does feel like a double album, is the opening and closing parts of Dreaming's two acts. Probably the only instance where Gonzalez does give in to the conventionalism of putting up artificial and arbitrary barriers. “Intro”, and “Soon My Friend”, bookend the first part, whereas “My Tears Are Becoming a Sea”, and “Outro”, do so for the later half. The openers really do feel as such, introducing the listener to the concepts and abstractness of the album in explosive and vibrant ways. To that end both closing tracks are achingly heart felt, with instruments more specific and precise as if to promote reflectiveness instead of massive cascades of multiple stimuli.
While Dreaming is certainly Gonzalez most expansive and conceptually specific album to date, in some ways it is a return to form and to his previous work. His earlier albums, Dead Seas, Red Cities, & Lost Ghosts and Before The Dawn Heals Us, also traded in the fashion of overwhelming and epic. His last album however, Saturdays = Youth was a departure, instead serving as something of a soundtrack to a movie that never existed. It was still more bold than anything else on the market, but it was much more oriented around pop structures. One way Dreaming differentiates itself from all of M83's early work is tone. This is for the most part a much more cheerful album, mostly devoid of the tension, terror, or macabre that defined much of his earlier work. Dreaming acutely contrasts the dangers and uncertainties hidden in the night, found in Before the Dawn Heals Us, and it isn't coated in the indulgent hyperbole of 80s melodrama that Saturdays = Youth was- as fun as that was. At times it seems to radiate a loving energy like in “Splendor”. Elsewhere it can't seem to restrain it's joy and excitement to simply exist, like in the remarkable “Year One, One UFO”. In it, an acoustic and electric guitar beat, as if emboldened by the kind of personification that can't happen in the real world race forward haphazardly, trying to beat each other to some imperceptible finish line. Meanwhile sharp acute bursts of Gonzalez's vocals punctuate the beat as he actually cheers them on. At other times Dreaming is staggeringly triumphant, as in “Steve McQueen”, a song that seems to score every montage of victory and progress ever put to film. Of course there is “Midnight City”- easily one of the best songs of year. A song that seems to define ideas of escalation and triumph with a synthesizer beat that grows more and more adventurous and consuming, only for it to be blown away by an insurgent barrage of beautifully composed saxophones. It's a song that pretty much takes ownership of the term “climax”. In this album their is no girl terrified of being terrorized by some unknown pursuer along a lost highway, like in Before The Dawn Heals Us. There is no girl that wants to write bad poetry in graveyard like in Saturdays = Youth. Here there is a girl that just wants to tell you how awesome licking a frog can be, how blue becomes red, and everything is a giant cupcake- she seems pretty happy about it.
I wonder if the exploratory adventure that little girl describes is a metaphor for the medium in which she communicates her story (if not than it's a pretty blatant and direct endorsement of children experimenting with some gnarly as fuck drugs). Either way, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is exploratory, and it is adventurous. While no single piece of work can ever realize an entire medium's potential Gonzalez does an admirable job of hinting at, and maybe even articulating the scope and scale of music's potential- showing just how good music can be. It's dreamy tranquility, hyper intense pop stylings, and monolithic sense of scale is a rare breed. Even by Gonzalez's standards, this album is something special, something he claims to be truly proud of. He said he hopes as many people as possible will hear it. Listen to him and listen to it.
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