Hurry Up We're Dreaming [Double CD]

A man comfortable exploring an infinite and ever-amplifying ambition to blissful new planes, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming arrives as a natural point in M83's often transcendent progression. After the all-consuming beauty of 2008's Saturdays = Youth, this feels like the double-barrelled statement designed to propel Gonzalez to the stars. But whatever the album(s) lack(s) in narrative due to the gargantuan track-listing, Gonzalez's single-mindedness and dreamy tenacity is enough to see the experience through to a resounding climax.

Asked to treat the release as two separate entities, it's a point of importance to Gonzalez that this album is considered to be more than just a single body of work, and something infinitely more coherent than a simple collection of tracks. It's a fine, comprehensive line to tread, and in many respects marks the album as the quintessential M83 timeline distilled, deconstructed and ostentatiously blown out all over again.

But where the sheer volume of tracks makes Hurry Up, We're Dreaming a potentially daunting prospect, there's a wonderful delight in the majestic builds and breakdowns of Midnight City; the scale and exultant splendour of Steve McQueen; the driving power of OK Pal; and the epic, reverb-drenched flourishes of My Tears Are Becoming a Sea. They're grandiose reminders that when Gonzalez wants to reduce you to a sighing ball of pulse, blood and bone, he will with breathtaking force and grace.

Those tracks alone are worthy of underpinning any great album, but subsequently there's a sense that Gonzalez has been undermined (albeit not undone) by his own grand ambitions. There's the obvious case that if the filler was cut, we might have a masterpiece on our hands; but that's not a salient point here because Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is about personal ambition - it's a brave attempt to push already innovative boundaries and to create something more powerful than what's come before.

While some consistency may have been sacrificed in favour of a space-filling selection of tracks, this set still represents a heaving, breathing journey through the introspective and the bombastic, the striving and the exhaustive. It is the undeniable sound of one man's triumphant dreams.

--Reef Younis

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M83 announces the highly anticipated new album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming released on 17 October 2011, through Naïve. After the release of 2008’s acclaimed album Saturdays = Youth which hit many end of year lists including Mojo and Drowned In Sound who made it their number one album that year, M83 (aka Anthony Gonzalez) will release his epic new double album, produced by Justin Meldal-Johnson (Beck, NIN, The Mars Volta, Goldfrapp) and including contributions from Zola Jesus, Brad Laner (from 90’s band Medicine) on guitar, and Saturdays = Youth vocalist Morgan Kibby. M83 fans have the opportunity to hear and download the first single, ‘Midnight City’, from today. The adrenaline-driven dreamlike track is unlike anything we have heard from M83 before and reveals a taster of this ambitious and impressive album that singles Gonzalez out as an artist at the pinnacle of his career who is ready to take leftfield music to the masses. Download the track from M83’s official website http://www.ilovem83.com/midnight-city or stop by http://soundcloud.com/m83/midnight-city to stream it. Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming tackles themes of awakening, craving, and conquering, and delves into new vocal territory for M83. “I think it is a reflection of my 30 years of being a human being. It’s a compilation of all my previous music together. It’s a retrospective of myself”, says Gonzalez. M83 will bring his unique live show to the UK later this year, more details to follow soon.