Anthony Gonzalez traces back to the origins of his music, when ideas were still born in the secrecy of Antibes bedrooms, in order to evoke emotion.
A letter, why not? In a world where everything moves quickly, where each record must immediately find its narrative and its audience, the gesture carries something deliciously anachronistic. After Junk (2016) and DSVII (2019), not the most exhilarating, Fantasy had already offered, in 2023, a first breath of fresh air.
I Wrote You a Letter continues this movement, but goes further back: toward the bedrooms and small studios where the first albums were born. Anthony Gonzalez begins to compose tracks “less polished, more direct, more raw”, alongside Benoît de Villeneuve, a regular collaborator since the memorable Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003).
Bringing forth the immense from almost nothing
Blister Sunrise opens the album with a massive wall of electro shoegaze reverb, before M83 continues its exploration between contemplation and explosion. Aged reveals a subtle balance between bright piano and waves of Larsen; Opera pushes the sonic levers toward the cinematic, while Traces of Love prolongs this sensation of contemplative drift.
Anthony Gonzalez seems to have chosen to look elsewhere: far from social media, from the race for success, and from the injunction to reveal oneself. And perhaps that is where the true challenge of this return to the roots lies: not to recover the sound of M83’s early albums, but their momentum, this way of bringing forth the immense from almost nothing. The original emotion, it seems, has resurfaced.
I Wrote You a Letter (Other Suns/Believe). Release on September 25.
