M83 Wants You To Leave Your House: An Interview with Anthony Gonzalez

image provided by Mute

M83, the brainchild of French synth magician Anthony Gonzalez, is on a roll: it seems that every album he releases is blessed with terms like “cinematic,” “epic,” “monumental,” and, of course, “best new music.” On the merits of his sprawling and fantastic most recent opus, the double-LP Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, Gonzalez reentered the limelight as a Los Angeles resident and somewhat reluctant superstar. This past weekend he and his band tore up Auditorium Shores, so we decided we should have a chat with the man about his online request for a new band member, the death of the CD, and not remembering his dreams.

Recently you needed another band member, so you posted on the web requesting auditions for somebody to join the band. How did that turn out?

It went well, we found a fantastic kid. He’s just turned 20 yesterday actually. So he’s pretty young, super talented, awesome attitude on stage. I really, really love him.

Did you end up giving a lot of people trials?

Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of videos, people that are really excited about us. I suppose it’s a little bit weird to me, but I’m so glad we found the right person.

Did you get some really strange submissions?

Yeah, I had some really weird ones. But I don’t want to talk bad behind their backs. It would be bad for the person I think. I have some funny ones; yeah…I have some funny ones. Some people, sometimes it seems like they don’t even realize that what they’re doing is so weird.

You’re not a big fan of the whole iTunes thing, and you want people to buy CDs. Do you think that in the future there will be a retro market for CDs, in the same way there’s a market for vinyl today?

I don’t know, CDs are a really weird platform, but now, you never really know what to expect in the music industry. It will be not viable one day, and then it will be, like the revival of vinyl, or even the cassettes are coming back. So, why not? There will be something about the object and people are getting nostalgic, and they’re hankering about a previous time of music, and the way we used to listen to music back in the day. And I feel like my generation of people are deep into listening to mp3s.

Do you think mp3s have taken the romance out of getting new music?

I think so. Everything is too easy and everything is accessible very quickly and there is no reason to fight any more for music, you know, and this is what I miss about the nineties. It used to be that I had to plan ahead and wake up in the morning and get in the line and go to my town record store. I was just excited about getting new music and now I'm not anymore. And I feel mp3s have something to do with that.

It's just a little too easy?

Yeah, it's too easy and you don't have to make any effort. It’s right there for you.

In the music video for “Midnight City,” in your mind, what’s the story behind the kids in that video?

I feel like the people who will really connect with this album are people who feel they don't really belong to this planet. You know, people that I feel like may be lonely, and people who are melancholy and nostalgic about the past. And, people who probably are not really confident about themselves, and dreamers as well. And this is what I am in general, you know, and these are the people I usually like.

So, what happens in the next scene of the film, Midnight City?

This is what I like about this medium, you can feel free to imagine the rest of the story, and let your imagination create. And I like that about this video. So what happens next is up to you.

Everyone talks about the dreaming elements of the album, but the album starts with the words “Hurry Up.” How does the idea of “hurry up” relate to the overall idea of the album?

Because there’s this very urgent thing about this album, the idea of not being able to have enough time to dream, and how we have to dream now because life is going too fast. Dreaming is so beautiful that we have to make sure we spend some time doing it.

You’ve said you remembered your dreams when you were a kid, but you don’t any more—do you feel like you've lost something?

Oh, I feel like I smoked too many drugs and my brain is not as young as it used to be [laughs].

Too much of a good time.

Yeah…I think so.

You’ve opened up for some pretty huge acts, bands like Kings of Leon and The Killers—their albums have pop songs, but not many ambient tunes or think pieces. When you were working on this album, did you feel any push to include only a bunch of three-minute pop songs?

I’m not sure, I just made the music as it sounded in my head at the time. I really never questioned myself about what’s right to do or what's wrong, and I just wanted to be like I’d been true with my music, and I just let my imagination go sometimes. You know when you feel like you’re actually doing something and you’re just doing it, not thinking really about the consequences? Well, that’s what I do.

If the album had been 44 minutes, anchored by like “Midnight City,” “Steve McQueen,” songs like that, do you think you would have had a better chance of being one of those super famous arena acts?

In all honesty, this has never been my goal, and this is just not my goal. I mean, I’m not making music to be rich and be famous and all that. I don’t do that for those things. Of course, like every musician I want my music to be listened to by the most people as possible, but I’ve never dreamed about being a rock star, really. I just want to make the music that looks like me, that sounds like me, because music is the only world I have found to express myself in. If you listen to my music, you, even if you don’t know me, you’ll know me really well.