🎵 M83 🎵

Blending synth pop and shoegaze into lush music

that makes the most of nostalgia's emotional impact,
M83 became one of the more influential acts of the
2000s and 2010s. Anthony Gonzalez's fascination with
memories, melancholy, and the past helped set the era's
musical trends, whether on the massive washes of
sound of 2003's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
or the hazy love letters to '80s pop of 2008's Saturdays
= Youth. Gonzalez's willingness to expand his music to
epic proportions, as on 2011's Grammy-nominated
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, and revisit the less
fashionable corners of vintage pop culture, as on 2016's
Junk, set him apart from many of his contemporaries.
Meanwhile, his mastery of mood made M83 a perfect
fit for soundtracks ranging from blockbusters like
2013's Oblivion to art films such as 2019's Knife+Heart.
 Gonzalez and his brother,
filmmaker and occasional M83 band member Yann,
grew up in Antibes, France. During his childhood, he
pursued the family's passion for football (his maternal
grandfather, Laurent Robuschi, was a striker who
played in France's national team at the 1966 FIFA
World Cup), but an injury at age 14 led him to explore
music instead. After his parents gave him a guitar, he
formed the band My Violent Wish with Nicolas
Fromageau while in secondary school. In his late teens,
Gonzalez added synths to his music and recorded a
demo that he sent to several local labels, including the
Parisian electronic imprint Gooom Records. When the
label signed him, he added Fromageau to the lineup to
help round out his music. Naming the project after the
M83 galaxy, Gonzalez and Fromageau recorded their
debut album on an eight-track recorder in 2000.
Released in April 2001, the largely instrumental M83
featured production by the band and Morgan Daguenet
and introduced the duo's conceptual approach to music-
making. Issued in 2003 in Europe and a year later in
North America, M83's second full-length, Dead Cities,
Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, earned them more recognition
and critical acclaim thanks to its expansive mix of
electronic beats and shoegaze ambience.

Following the Dead Cities, Red

Seas & Lost Ghosts tour, Fromageau left M83 to pursue
a solo career, ultimately forming the band Team Ghost
in 2009. Gonzalez returned to the studio to record the
project's third album. Featuring the addition of vocals
and more consistent rhythms, January 2005's Before the
Dawn Heals Us was released by Gooom in Europe and
by Mute Records in the U.S. When he finished touring
in support of the album, he expanded on M83's ambient
leanings -- as well as his love of Krautrock -- with
September 2007's Digital Shades, Vol. 1, which
included contributions from engineer and producer
Antoine Gaillet.
 For M83's fifth album,
Gonzalez broadened the scope of his music: Working
with producers Ken Thomas and Ewan Pearson and
vocalist Morgan Kibby, he drew inspiration from his
teenage years and the romantic, anthemic sounds of '80s
pop music. The results were Saturdays = Youth, which
reached number 107 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart
and number one on the Billboard Heatseekers chart
when it was released in April 2008. After a lengthy
tour, Gonzalez moved to Los Angeles in 2010 to
commemorate his 30th birthday. That year, he also
contributed two new M83 songs and several previously
released tracks to the soundtrack to Black Heaven,
director Gilles Marchand's story of a young man drawn
into a deadly video game.