Padrino's next pick is:
Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts - M83 - 2003
Wiki
He is unavailable to do his traditional in-depth writeup, but will rectify the situation in the morning.
Padrino's next pick is:
Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts - M83 - 2004
...
He is unavailable to do his traditional in-depth writeup, but will rectify the situation in the morning.
thank you, VF. i appreciate the assist. quick corrective note: the album actually came out in 2003, and to make it official on my end......
with the ninth pick in the eleventh round of the 2013 Desert Island Music Draft, i selected...
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (04/14/03):
01 Birds
02 Unrecorded
03 Run into Flowers
04 In Church
05 America
06 On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain
07 Noise
08 Be Wild
09 Cyborg
10 0078h
11 Gone
12 Beauties Can Die
Genre: electronica, shoegaze, dream pop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Cities,_Red_Seas_&_Lost_Ghosts
i play the drums, but i don't consider myself to be a musician. that said, have you ever had a sound locked away inside of your skull that you just couldn't access? i have a deep love for synth-based music, and i'd long been waiting for a band that would take the Cure's "Plainsong" and stretch it out to its most logical conclusion. it was something that i could almost hear in my mind. what would that hypothetical band sound like? M83 turned out to be that band, and Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts was my introduction to their splendor...
having discovered the Cure and Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine through a prism of influence inside of the Deftones' music, it was not such a surprise to me when i heard the song "Unrecorded" as part of the Deftones' introductory playlist before they took the stage at a concert in 2006. with house speakers rumbling, all i could hear were those glorious synths swelling and receding, like tidal waves crashing across my ear drums. i was with a dear friend of mine, and he would later tell me that i looked utterly spellbound as i listened, eyes wide, mouth half-agape. it's not often that a song you hear right
before a concert takes your breath away more than the live performance you're about to witness...
of course, i'd seen the Deftones, i dunno, eight or nine times before that? and it was, once again, a great show. but more than anything, i
needed to know what it was that i heard prior to the lowering of the lights. i actually stuck around after the concert, hoping to meet the band
specifically so i could ask them who the **** that amazing band was on their intro playlist. i'd met the Deftones at prior shows, and they're always really cool about talking music with fans. it's hard to believe that a single alt-metal band could take me in as many new musical directions as they have, but it's safe to say that i owe the 'tones quite a lot. i didn't get a chance to meet them this time around, but i did run into one of their roadies during tear-down, and he graciously pointed me in the right direction...
M83 took their name from the spiral galaxy Messier 83, and it's an instance in which a band's name is clearly so inextricably tied to the music they make. they are probably more appropriately labeled stargazers than shoegazers. they stack analog synth lines on top of each other to replicate the wall-of-sound dynamics that one might find in really great shoegaze, in bands like My Bloody Valentine. and the result is a tremendous journey across the galaxies, like an alternate score to the star gate sequences from 2001: A Space Odyssey. in fact, that is perhaps the best way to describe Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts: it is a soundtrack without a film to accompany it, it is the film score to everyone's dream of flying, of reaching toward the sky. i could describe the songs in detail, but that seems a disservice to the listener, who really just needs to
hear it to
know it...
M83 have since gone on to attract a bit of mainstream attention. in fact, you've undoubtedly heard a snippet of the 2011 song that lifted M83 into the arms of the masses (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aZFcosBTaQ) as kings games cut to commercial break last season!! while their take on John Hughes-inflected 80's synth-pop has brought them a larger audience across their last couple of album releases, it's those earlier records, those soundtracks to the sound in my head, that i love the most...
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