Pitchfork

After a low-key debut and two records of scintillating, maximalist end times anthems-- plus last year's ambient detour Digital Shades Vol. 1-- M83 is all set to tone things down a bit. Saturdays = Youth, the analog wizard's new LP for Mute (due April 15 in North America, April 14 overseas), exists as a post-apocalyptic hangover of sorts and also heralds a new direction for the M83 project.

We caught up with M83's center of gravity Anthony Gonzalez to discuss this change, the non-ironic influence of the 1980s, and what else we can look forward to this year from M83.

Gonzalez puts it bluntly: "I think repetition is death. So the new record [has] a different path and a different focus." Yet, as he's quick to add, "It's different but it's from the same mold.

"I don't think this record is a betrayal for M83 fans. I just wanted to make something different and I hope they will like this new departure, because I think the fans were waiting for something else too."

Saturdays serves, in a sense, as a year zero for Gonazlez. As he tells it, "I felt like Before the Dawn Heals Us was a kind of conclusion to everything I had done before-- like electric crescendos and rock and tragic lyrics-- and I needed some fresh air. I spent a long time trying to find and to love this new direction of mine."

For this so-called new direction, Gonzalez looked both inward and backward, to the decade of Reaganomics, larger-than-life coiffures, and new wave: the 1980s.

"I just wanted to make [this record] more personal," Gonzalez explains. "I'm fed up with all these albums paying tribute to the 80s because, in general, the 80s are really treated as kitsch and as a cheesy decade-- and people love that. But for my part I consider the 80s in a really serious way, and there is no irony at all in my musical relation to the 80s. So yeah, I really can cry when I listen to a Kate Bush song or Simple Minds."

Guest vocalist Morgan Kibby (of Los Angeles' the Romanovs), whose buoyant siren cries anchor several of Saturdays' tracks, will inevitably garner comparisons to another of Gonzalez's 80s faves, Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins.

For Kibby and Gonzalez, it was a match made in heaven MySpace. As he explains, "She's an actress as well, and I worked on a movie soundtrack and the director was a friend of Morgan's. I was looking for a female singer so [the director] gave me her number. I just listened to a few of her songs on MySpace and I really liked it so I just asked her to [be on the album]."

Kibby plans to tour with M83. The act already has a trio of March performances in Australia scheduled, and there's talk of heading to North America at some point this year. Following tour duties, Gonzalez hopes to begin brewing up a batch of ambient tracks for the second volume of Digital Shades.

But before all that there's the new album. Saturdays = Youth is also noteworthy for its use of two different producers: Ewan Pearson (the Rapture, Goldfrapp, Gwen Stefani), who helped M83 lay initial demo tracks in Berlin, and Ken Thomas (Sigur Rós, Cocteau Twins, Suede), with whom Gonzalez completed the album in Wales. For Gonzalez, these two complemented one another perfectly.

"I had a clear idea of what I wanted on the record, so the best solution for me to create exactly what I wanted was to have two producers: one producer who worked a lot in the 80s and who had a lot of experience producing bands-- so Ken came to mind-- and one with a more modern approach to music-- Ewan Pearson, who has worked on many recent records and albums. So I really liked the experience of Ken Thomas mixed with the modernity of Ewan Pearson."

As Gonzalez admits, "I don't know much about producing. I don't really like it. I just love to make music and compose music, but that's all. I don't like to spend so much time on just one song and to experiment, I don't really like that. So it's cool to have like someone like Ken Thomas, who was really helpful."

Still, when it comes to actually making that music, Gonzalez prefers to go it alone.

"A lot of people ask me, 'Does it make a difference from when you were also working with [former M83 member] Nicolas [Fromageau]?' It wasn't so different because Nicolas joined the project when I was about to write my first album for Gooom, and at the time I guess I didn't feel confident enough to face everything on my own. So it was great for me to have Nicolas around for the first two records.

"The problem was I didn't like to share what I considered my baby, so even when Nicolas was around I behaved as if I were alone. I don't know, it could sound selfish, but that's the way it is-- I like that feeling of loneliness, just me and my work and that's all."

M83:

03-11 Sydney, Australia - Enmore Theatre
03-12 Melbourne, Australia - Forum Theatre
03-14 Brisbane, Australia - Tivoli Theatre