In 2013 Mark Fisher used the term hauntology to describe the feelings of nostalgia for lost futures or for ones we will never have. In 2023 Anthony Gonzalez, aka M83, evokes the exact same feeling in his newest album Fantasy. Thirteen tracks that create an alternative world, responding to some nostalgia for the future or, maybe, nostalgia for some utopia to believe in.
As a reaction to the current world, the purpose of the album is to create an alternative environment to take the pain away. All the sounds evoke familiar, childhood memories and the feeling is to be on a cloud that levitates far from the Earth, within the universe. Between sci-fi and fairy tales.
According to Anthony Gonzalez, the album should give its very best and be the most impactful live. The artist declared about the artistic process: “I faced the daunting feeling of being more present both with vocals and lyrics’’. Along with these two elements, there is a stronger combination of guitars and synths – the album credits list 37 different synths or keyboards, beside a long list of “effects and treatments”. The result is a compelling mix of shoegaze, dreampop, electronic, indie-rock and occasionally cinematographic music. Mixing funky elements and 80s nostalgia, it is an effective mixing experiment.
The project dates back to 2021 and, according to the singer, it aims to recall their previous work Before the Dawn Heals Us. The cover is a monstrous grotesque figure, “It is the portrait of the will to escape our current world”.
Already in the first track, ‘Water Deep’, the feeling is to be on a starship in the moment of taking off. The evocative and sense-amplifying track brings the listener inside a fantasy world. It is the start of a journey “beyond somewhere”, as the only words in the second track ‘Oceans Niagara’ read.
On the fourth track ‘Us And The Rest’, the journey is set, takeoff is over, and the Earth is far away. Exactly in the middle, the song explodes…and it takes us farther and farther. The feeling is also conveyed through the vanishing effect at the end of the song. A new paragraph of the journey starts, including a meditative moment in ‘Radar, Far, Gone’; the title track; and the excellent feat with Kaela Sinclair, with French lyrics, in ‘Kool Nuit’.
In the 13th and last track, ‘Dismemberment Bureau’, it seems like aliens are finally on Earth and celebrate with nostalgia of what humans used to be, “Do you miss the day of human revolution?’’ the choir sings. It is the end – for now – of the fantasy world that the album creates. In the unveiling of tracks, the fantasy world itself unveils, but the last song brings everyone back to Earth. It’s a goodbye, but not forever. Only until another chapter of this fantasy will start.
Words by Miriam Viscusi
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