Raise your arms the highest you can, so the whole uni­verse will glow…

Last night I had the pri­vi­lege of seeing M83 live at Scala in Lon­don, with The Domino State sup­por­ting; and oh how superb it all was. Of course there was a strong focus on the new album, Saturday=Youth, but they didn’t for­get the old songs, mixing it up beau­ti­fully with Dead Cities and Before the Dawn Heals Us. As the rising drums, gui­tars and rhythm of “A Gui­tar and a Heart” crashed through the venue with ever inc­rea­sing furor and energy, a shi­ver shot down my spine and I hoped it would never end.

Here is some crappy foo­tage I shot on my camera just for my own nos­tal­gic pur­po­ses. Note how the camera can’t hold its auto focus in the light levels, giving the impres­sion I can’t focus anything.

Review by There Goes The Fear:

Nor­mally the words shoe­gaze, pop, 80s, rave and enjo­ya­ble shouldn’t be put next to each other, let alone used to desc­ribe the same 90 minu­tes. Howe­ver, those are just the words I’m going to use to desc­ribe last night’s M83 gig at London’s Scala.

Taking to a stage cove­red with enough cables to give even the most sea­so­ned of elec­tri­cians a heart attack, Anthony Gon­za­lez (who’s much sma­ller and more elflike in real life than I had rea­li­sed…) made it clear it was his night, and with the help of a few sup­por­ting artists ploughed through an impres­sive selec­tion of his work from the past 7 years.

Natu­rally, the focus of the eve­ning was on new album Saturdays=Youth, with tracks like Cou­leurs, Gra­ve­yard Girl and Kim & Jes­sie get­ting some of the big­gest cheers of the night. Howe­ver, whilst his new pop direc­tion was the rea­son Scala was so pac­ked, he didn’t for­get the diehard fans from his early days (and there were a few…), thro­wing in some har­der dan­cier num­bers which cul­mi­na­ted in the encore with an almost full-on rave. Well, for about 5 minutes.

Shoe­gaze was the theme of the eve­ning really though, with many songs blu­rring into one, and for the casual fan (like myself) it was easy to lose your­self in the music for 10 minu­tes, totally entran­ced by the team­work and the skills of everyone.

The Hox­ton Hotel (‘the urban lodge’) in Lon­don recently had a sale, where a lucky few could purchase rooms for £1 a night or £29 a night. Most came away with nothing, but Sam was lucky enough to not only get a room, but two con­se­cu­tive nights on the wee­kend of her birth­day! Fantastic!

Said wee­kend star­ted last Fri­day, we each took the day off and took our quick and usual route into the cen­tre; mee­ting outside Lei­ces­ter Square, cases in tow, ready to be tou­rists for a cou­ple of days. After apple juice and lunch in St James’ park we took the Northern Line to Old Street and chec­ked in, elec­tri­fied by the overwhel­ming tren­di­ness that is both the hotel and surroun­ding area. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, its been a week now since I retur­ned from the US, UTAH and the West­gate Resort in Park City. I’ve just about reco­ve­red from the 7 hour time dif­fe­rence, which was com­poun­ded by a 24 hour day of tra­ve­ling inc­lu­ding a harro­wing down the moun­tain drive in heavy snow, two flight con­nec­tions (Detroit and Min­nea­po­lis) and a 2 hour coach trip from Heath­row back to St Albans. I’m also not a Mormon.

Hea­ding over appea­red easier on paper, short flight to CDG, Paris then an 11 hour Air France flight to Salt Lake City (do not go to the Tra­ve­lodge near Heath­row and cer­tainly do not taste their food — if you must there is a nicer loo­king pub just around the cor­ner). Loo­king online befo­rehand we noted the movies we wan­ted to watch, etc. Unfor­tu­na­tely the flight was with an Air France part­ner, Delta, without a sophis­ti­ca­ted in flight enter­tain­ment sys­tem — ins­tead giving us in the aisle airings of the awful “Little Miss Pet­ti­grew Lives for a Day” and “Kung Fu Panda”, lea­ving 7 hours to spare. No doubt the com­pli­men­tary Kro­nen­bourg 1664 hel­ped the trip go a little fas­ter. All in all it felt like a short haul flight — just really really long. Lea­ving the dull Lon­don 12C we were trea­ted to a bas­king 88F on arri­val, where we pic­ked up our 4x4 Suzuki ren­tal and pro­cee­ded towards Park City in the mountains.

Read the rest of this entry »