Gig review: M83, Edinburgh Picture House

By DAVID POLLOCK
Published on 28/06/2012 02:13

For more than a decade, since he co-founded M83 in his native France and released their eponymous debut album, Anthony Gonzalez has built upon a slow drip of critical adoration.

The crowd here were mesmerised and obviously adoring fans, but the feeling is that he’s about due a trade-up from venues of this size.

His old partner in the group Nicolas Fromageau has long since left, but this was still very much a group effort – amongst the full band Gonzalez has assembled was his own brother Yann. They were all versatile players, a help when taking into account the mass of complementary styles M83 have accrued over the years. In Steve McQueen they demonstrated a flair for resonant and anthemic contemporary pop with the vaguest hint of populist successes like The Feeling about it. With Wait, on the other hand, they developed a rich wall of noise from a cymbals-as-lapping-waves wash of Sigur Ros-style post-rock to a crescendo that was all too resonant of the currently voguish shoegaze style.

As we approached the end, the beats got louder and the rhythms more pronounced. The sublime Midnight City was also the one which enjoyed the fondest reaction, its piercing keyboard riff leading off a sublime slice of contemporary electronic pop. By the encore we were sailing as close as it gets to the Parisian house music style at an ostensibly traditional gig, with each of the three songs marked by a pounding, danceable shape and a near-absence of lyrics.

Rating: ****