Amazon.co.uk Review
Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts is the second album from French electronica duo M83 (Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau) who, thankfully, derive their name from a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Hydra and not from an interminably lacklustre stretch of noxious British motorway. The name certainly nods to where their wide-eyed spaced-out technicolour imaginations are fixed, but they also know how to sound ponderously intense--hence the cold, cello-aided sonority of "Gone", possibly the only track on the album that defies the lambent warmth of the purring analogue synths and beguiling reveries that make the rest of the album as enticingly therapeutic as a thermal spa.
Humane post-rock is clearly M83's strongest attribute because both "Run into Flowers" and "On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain" are curiously pretty cameos, far removed from the automatic anaemia of other workmanlike button-pushers. The high point, though, is the symphonic sweetness and motherly female choral vocals of "Beauties Can Die", which is rather like being cradled in the arms of an angel, or at the very least the arms of Sigur Ros and Lesley Garrett. If one really has to die and go to heaven, one rather hopes the journey up there will sound like this. --Kevin Maidment
CD Description
Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau, two young Frenchmenwith a penchant for electronic music, released their first album as M83 in 2001. Two years later (three in the US), they upped the ante with DEAD CITIES, RED SEAS & LOST GHOSTS. It's easy to forgive the countless My Bloody Valentine comparisons the duo garners, especially when the ethereal-yet-organic flow of their swirling, sparkling sound pushes the same emotional buttons that LOVELESS did over a dozen years earlier. The main difference between M83 and MBV, however, is that in sharp contrast to Kevin Shields's lush guitar orchestrations, most of M83's sounds are electronically generated. The blissful swoops and shudders that grace every track may sound like forces of nature, but their origins are largely digital. In this respect, one might make just as valid a connection to the mid-'90s ambient folk-pop of Flying Saucer Attack. Reference points aside, DEAD CITIES is a standout recording of its time, whether you stack it among contemporaries inrock, electronica, or any other genre.
