Biography

M83 (named after the spiral galaxy “Messier 83”) is electronic artist Anthony Gonzalez. Gonzalez and former member Nicolas Fromageau founded the group in 2001 in Antibes, France. M83’s style owes a lot to the shoegaze genre, in that there is much emphasis on tonality, extensive use of reverb effects and often softly-spoken lyrics at times submerged in instrumentation.

All five of M83’s albums have been well received - in particular their second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which allowed them to break through to a larger audience. For the third album released by M83, Before The Dawn Heals Us, Gonzalez decided to part from Fromageau (after an emotionally distressing tour for Dead Cities) and record on his own.

M83’s song “Unrecorded” from Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts was used in the trailer for the American release of the Russian movie Night Watch, and the track “Teen Angst”, taken from “Before The Dawn Heals Us”, appeared on the trailer for the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel “A Scanner, Darkly”, which was released in 2006.

M83 produced the remix of the track ‘Pioneers’ on the British rock group Bloc Party’s 2005 album Silent Alarm Remixed.

The Deftones also use the song “Be wild” (taken from Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts) on their 2007 world tour as intro music. Snow Patrol also used “Teen Angst”, taken from “Before The Dawn Heals Us” as their 2006 tour opener.

M83 also collaborated with other Gooom Disques artists in a collaborative LP, under the name Purple Confusion.

In 2005, M83 also released a re-issue of their 2001 self-titled album. The 2001 release had never been released in the United States, so this introduced this album stateside.

Just after the Before the Dawn Heals Us US tour, Anthony Gonzalez decided to take M83 in a more ambient direction (as heard on some earlier M83 tracks) and started to write and record a collection of ambient works. The relevance of digital music (from creation to sharing), gave him the idea to call the project Digital Shades Volume 1, and to make the album part of an ongoing series.

Recorded primarily at his home studio with the assistance of Antoine Gaillet, who had previously worked on Before the Dawn Heals Us, Anthony was able to work without pressure, creating the new material at his own time and pace. Originally recorded in 2006, Digital Shades Volume 1 marks the beginning of a new period of activity for M83, since Anthony is already back in the studio working on a brand new album which will be released in January 2008. In keeping with the creative thinking behind the album, Digital Shades Volume 1 will naturally be released on all digital download formats as well as on more traditional formats such as vinyl and CD on September 3rd, 2007.

M83´s 2008 album Saturdays=Youth, released on Mute, was recorded with the help of Ken Thomas and Ewan Pearson and the first single Graveyard Girl was launched on 14 Apr 2008 together with the track Couleurs. The album leaked onto peer-to-peer networks on March 19, 2008.

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