{"id":4994,"date":"2012-02-29T00:43:55","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T07:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=4994"},"modified":"2012-02-29T00:43:55","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T07:43:55","slug":"m83","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/02\/m83\/","title":{"rendered":"M83"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>M83<\/h1>\n

Why Anthony Gonzalez left France to seek his fortune in California\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Before starting work on ambient pop act M83\u2019s\u00a0latest album, Hurry Up, We\u2019re Dreaming<\/em>, bandleader Anthony Gonzalez uprooted himself and moved from his native France to Los Angeles. The essence of his new surroundings seeped into the project, an ambitious two-CD set comprising 22 songs.\u00a0\u201cSometimes you need to be driven by something new,\u201d Gonzalez says. \u201cI was surrounded by new people and new friends and \u00a0I was excited about my life in a different culture, very different from France and Europe. It was the first time I was somewhere by \u00a0myself.\u201d And not just anywhere: Gonzalez had his reasons for choosing L.A. \u201cThe weather,\u201d he says, \u201cand that most of the movies I watched as a kid came from California\u2014there\u2019s something about California that\u2019s always fascinated me. Somehow I\u00a0feel I belong there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film is a major influence on Gonzalez\u2019s music; he thinks of himself less as a singer than a soundtrack writer scoring life as it happens around him. \u201cAll my idols are movie directors, not musicians,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m making an album, I want to sound like Terrence Malick, David Lynch or Werner Herzog. When I\u2019m composing music, I have pictures in my head, landscapes. I feel like my way of making music is very different from other artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landscapes were a particularly important part of his songwriting on Hurry Up<\/em>. Gonzalez often loaded a couple of keyboards and a computer in his car and drove to unfamiliar locales to soak up new sights. \u201cI needed to be inspired by different things, and wanted to feel that the songs were very different from each other yet somehow related,\u201d says Gonzalez, who formed M83 a decade ago in Antibes, France. \u201cDriving to different landscapes really \u00a0helped me achieve that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez had long wanted to make a double album, which he viewed as a musical rite of passage. \u201cI guess like every musician, I had this vision of the double album as necessary at some point in the career of an artist,\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t see myself not doing one.\u201d With listeners increasingly migrating away from physical albums, Gonzalez decided he\u2019d best not delay. \u201cI was turning 30, felt ready and had a lot of material. It seemed like the right time,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I waited another two or three years it would be too late for the music industry. It\u2019s more about singles and iTunes, and not so much about albums anymore. It changes so fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M83 Why Anthony Gonzalez left France to seek his fortune in California\u00a0 Before starting work on ambient pop act M83\u2019s\u00a0latest album, Hurry Up, We\u2019re Dreaming, bandleader Anthony Gonzalez uprooted himself and moved from his native France to Los Angeles. The essence of his new surroundings seeped into the project, an ambitious two-CD set comprising 22 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3137,3135,3134,2864,10156,3136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4997,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4994\/revisions\/4997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}