M83 Gig at Scala, 22nd Oct 08

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.