M83?

The Mogwai set sounds most special. I'm envious! :-) Glad I've seen them a couple of times, though.

ysi?

Give me grace and chemicals,
I want to run into.

i'd YSI it but hymn doesn't appear to be working with stuff bought in iTunes 6, so ... anyway, it's only 79p. go on, get it. it sounds, basically, like a great lost depeche mode track.

Bloc Party - The Pioneers (M83 remix)

http://s5.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=35BFRBNPNNTIA36WPDBFAVLDH5

GET DOWNLOADING, THE KIDS.

See, this way you will now see how great Bloc Party are. Wait, where are you going?

This is the best description of M83 I have ever read. Amazing!

so i got an e-mail -- in french -- a couple of days ago telling me all about m83's new "ambient" album. i was suspicious.

i just listened to the tiny extract -- 1'30" worth of new song -- on myspace (go on, you can guess the address).

i wept. i'm not joking. somehow the music he makes is hard-wired to my soul. it's not even a reaction i try to explain any more.

out on september 3 (in the US and france, anyway; not sure about the UK yet.) i have a feeling it might just pip jesu, trans am and low -- and the mute box set -- to the coveted "grimly album of the year" spot, and i've not even heard the fucker yet.

based on that minute and a half, though ... no, really.

ewan pearson has been working on this, apparently.

I sometimes forget how massively in love I was/have been/still am with M83 (esp. their debut and "Dead Cities..."). Thank you for my new-found anticipation for their/his next disc!

I am, however, doubly intrigued by grimly fiendish's high regard for Trans Am's latest. I'd read it was a return-to-form of sorts (personally, secretly hoping for a "Surrender To The Night" era resurgence of some kind sometime), but hadn't seen "Sex Change" held in such high regard elsewhere {which is my roundabout way of saying, tell me more! (please)}.

my sex change thred in all its glory

it's probably the best thing they've done, to be honest. it's more ... what's the word? "focused", perhaps ... than "surrender" (and certainly than "red line"), and certainly less knowing than "liberation" (which i actually think is enormously under-rated). it's like essence of trans am; all the ingredients distilled into an album of perfection.

really. it's that good. it's better than that. go get.

(how did "mi" become "my" there? grr.)

the lack of interest in this could also make me weep.

Mogwai on "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong" created a song which I still think is probably their finest effort, and nailed the crescendo/epic/lead melody combination SO perfectly, so rightly. It stands out still for me as an example of sublime, careful arrangement, of making sure everything is in its place, of huge scope and quiet, reflective detail. It's a song that makes me glad to be alive.

HAHA this is word-for-word pretty much what I think! I might have 'Kids Will Be Skeletons' just ahead of it for economy purposes, but it's a close-run thing.

just listened to "digital shades volume one". i was going to say it's like the wonder of the music is in some kind of inverse proportion to the shitness of the cover:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FrNVGI8iL._SS500_.jpg

but, actually, the more i look, the more i like. don't ask me why.

the music, though ... ah, my god. it's not an album proper -- it's more like a collection of fragments -- but it ends up like distilled essence of M83, and as such is in the orbit of perfection. there's none of the exultation of the last one; it's much more introspective (although, y'know, with M83 these things are relative) and almost painfully poignant in parts.

fundamentally: quite, quite exquisite.

it's less than 40 minutes, too, which probably means i'll listen to it more than some of the other stuff. in fact, i think i'm going to listen again now. sleep? fuck that.

(a small but very tired part of me now wishes i'd gone to sleep instead of staying up drinking whisky, listening to M83 and reading irvine welsh.)

I often wish I'd done things other than reading Irvine Welsh.

i often wish more people on ILM liked M83.

ah heck i'd probably like these dudes, i'll go download some now

HURRAH.

enjoy.

Might be reviewing the new album for Plan B, waiting to hear back.

xpost, I think many people do, it's just that this album has been presented oddly as kind of an interim thing - maybe people just want the next "proper" album.

you might be right, spencer -- which is a shame. then again: maybe it's actually the kind of thing only a hardcore brainwashed M83 slave could love. in which case ... ach, hey, i'm happy with that.

I've loved the two M83 albums, and hadn't even heard of anything new yet. So I am eagerly awaiting this...

grimly, I have a grand total of 6 songs by M83 and I treasure them. I don't post a lot but I read ILM pretty much every day, and I think there may be plenty of us partial lurkers who like* (what they've heard of) this band. The question is, should their albums be listened to as albums, or are my more piecemeal listening methods acceptable?

*I think "like" is an understatement here.

well, purely personally, i feel that if i'm going to invest emotional time and energy in something so ... well, intense ... it works better over the longer format. then again: i can be sitting on the bus and think, heh, listening to "lower your eyelids" would add an interesting new dimension to this journey.

i'd suggest starting off with either "dead cities" or "before the dawn" -- i prefer the latter, FWIW -- and seeing what you make of the full, glorious album journey ;)

i kinda like these guys but i'm rarely in the mood for somethign so starchild-birth-of-the-universe-supernova...ish.

Wow this new one is really great. Like M83 vs Vangelis or something. Mellower than Before the Dawn but I can listen to it straight through.

There's something quite elegant about it.