M83, London Koko

M83

July 7, 2009

I last saw M83 at the tail-end of 2008; they were playing St. Giles-in-the-Fields church, and it was one of the most mesmerising live music experiences a human living within the bounds of convention could expect to witness. It was the closest I’ve ever felt to being entirely overwhelmed, consumed as it were, by music.

So it’s with intrepidation that I now find myself at the massive ceiling’d Koko. It could go wrong. I envision an impatient crowd talking through the first act, otherwise known as Anthony Gonzalez‘s strikingly electronic solo show. I also ponder whether there really are enough M83 fans in London to fill Koko. In terms out I’m right and wrong respectively.

(Such is my ever-perpetuating enthusiasm for what I’m watching that this review was initially conceived as a letter to Anthony Gonzalez, eventually deposited in favour of something less selfish.)

The bassist present in December has now mysteriously disappeared, though – not that there’s a gap – and the drums are still situated protectively behind a glass screen. And the bigger venue is utilised more than imaginable by ever-fitting lighting, taking the place of a diktat.

The venue is absolutely packed, and the show once again takes the structure of two halves; the first segment is just Gonzalez and his machines, and the second comes complete with drums and a second keyboard. As great as the sudden burgeoning into ‘band’ is, I’d like M83 to go the opposite way – I’d like to see them make a guitar-based album, and tour it with Gonzalez as a proper frontman closing with a synth-heavy encore. He seems far more comfortable facing the crowd with his guitar in hand this time around. It’s the ‘songs’ that induce the kind of mass hysteria festering in my mind, both in the trio and the audience at large.

‘Don’t Save Us From The Flames’ from Before The Dawn Heals Us is a marvel, with the most spectacular crescendo of an opening. ‘Teen Angst’ also works a dream, threatening to create a floor-to-ceiling shroud of its own doing. Morgan Kibby‘s soft vocals are like Elizabeth Fraser in soft porn, and the sonic spectrum around M83 seems boundless.

So M83′s first half fails to get the audience on side, but for those who have human decency enough to shut up, a stunning display of emotion through dynamics are witnessed. It’s a different beast to Saturdays=Youth‘s Molly Ringwald moments. The heavy synths are blinding and have my senses agog, all over again – in spite of my dreaming of seeing M83 as a three or four-piece in a dingy, sticky basement venue.

‘Kim and Jessie’ is slowed down to devastating effect, and the lyrics become irrelevant for the galaxy of sound rebounding off the walls. The Eno-esque grandeur of rave-up ‘Sitting’ lends itself to filling the entire venue, from corner to corner. ‘Skin Of The Night’ has these enormously windswept, cyclical keyboard patterns.

When ‘Couleurs’ kicks in, it needs to be transported to a warehouse. ‘Graveyard Girl’ is otherwordly, and the opening of ‘We Own The Sky’ recreating the magically romanticised ’80s nostalgia at its core. The experience is enough in itself on record, but complete with the lighting mastery at Koko, it’s more an education.

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