M83

An alternately transcendent and dodgy prospect live, M83 is the province of French musician and producer Anthony Gonzalez, who makes dramatic post-rock stuck somewhere among Tortoise, Air, and Boards Of Canada. M83’s 2003 album, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, offered the kind of loud, stirring tracks that prove hard to breathe around, but their breathlessness becomes addicting over time. The same goes for 2008’s Saturdays=Youth, a significantly more developed album that tightens up song structures around Gonzalez’s keen taste for vocals and sounds skewed toward the glory days of the ’80s. Last year’s double album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, again goes for big, synth-driven show-stoppers with full-on arrangements that inspire reverence like secular hymns.

Updated 04/26/2012