M83- Live at the Walt Disney Concert Hall
Written by willshoob on Monday, 9 of March , 2009 at 4:35 pm
Last night (along with my wonderful parents and #1 female homie) I attended M83 live with the LA Philharmonic, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown, Los Angeles. I was first drawn to this show because of the really awesome concept. The LA Phil has done shows like this in the past (Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists, and bands like that), but doing it with an electronic/space rock band sounded really intriguing. I imagined the multi-layered, slow building music of M83 sounding even more epic with a full orchestra backing him, and I was correct.
P.S. Sorry for the shitty picture, this is the best my Iphone did before the Disney Concert Hall usher screamed at me.
The show started off on a sort of unexpected note, as Anthony Gonzalez (M83) took the stage by himself and started twisting knobs. His live set-up consisted of a couple of laptops running Ableton, 3 vintage synths, and a huge box that seemed to be an effects controller or something. He hit play on his computer and started layering anthemic synth lines over 80’s sounding drums. I don’t think he played any of his recorded material, and if he did, it was almost impossible for me to recognize. I’m not sure if this first set was improvised or not, but either way it was really impressive. It was truly mesmerizing to listen to. You could predict when the huge parts of the song would hit, but it never got boring. Every one of his songs follows a similar pattern, but they all have a certain originality to them. After about 30 or so minutes of this, he left the stage and the Philharmonic took the orchestra.
I’m going to be honest, I am really not a fan of classical music. I appreciate it for what it is, but you’ll never find me listening to it. What I did enjoy however, was how the music they played, meshed so well with Anthony’s music. They played a sort of boring piece, that just seemed to go in circles before it ended. After about 10 minutes, it ended, and it was time for an intermission. After the intermission, the Philharmonic took the stage by themselves again, and played another short piece. This one was in three parts and was all composed by Debussey. I enjoyed this piece a lot more, as it featured a lot of the simplistic building that is featured in M83’s music. It was very similar in the sense of a slow build, but the build was worth the wait as it rose into a huge wall of noise.
Immediately after the piece ended, Anthony came back onstage, although without a drummer. I can’t remember if he played “Moonchild” first or second, but whenever it was played, it was truly amazing. I think it was the second song, because it had live drums, and the live drummer played on the first and the fourth songs. Anyways, after “Moonchild” the drummer/vocalist (also a keyboardist) left the stage and with the full orchestra, Anthony and the LA Phil played his remix of Bloc Party’s “Pioneers.” Not only was it amazing, the actual concept was mind blowing. The LA Philharmonic playing an electronic bands remix of a Bloc Party song, was hard to wrap my head around. After that ended, the band entered back on stage and it stood silent for a minute. Then, you heard the “tick tick tick” and I immediately knew that we were about to enter into 11 minutes of sheer epicness. The entire orchestra (plus the choir) slowly launched into “Lower Your Eyelids To Die With The Sun.” No matter how many times I listen to this song on my Itunes, or how many times I see the trailer for Spike Jonze’s skate video, the surrealistic feeling I had listening to this will never be achieved again. I really can’t put it into words, but everything about it was sensational. When the choir kicked in, it was truly like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. That’s really all I can say about it.
Bloc Party- The Pioneers (M83 Remix)
M83- Lower Your Eyelids To Die With The Sun
Category: Concerts
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