This is what it looked like from the outside of Walt Disney Concert Hall. I wont use words. That diamond is the moon, as if the camera couldn't handle its grandeur next to the silver and alien building.
This is what it looked like watching M83 on the inside, playing with the LA Philharmonic. I went on a man date, taking one of my dearest because he's solid and then some and because I've recently decided to get off romance. So that's where I was at, out on a Saturday night, drifting downtown and fully sober because of the things I knew I was going to put my body through today...Sunday. They executed the evening as something of a tag team. Anthony Gonzalez came out and did three songs all by himself, just computers and synthesizers and foot pedals and the sound inside of this place is like nothing I had ever heard...just echoing, like you can feel the music swimming into your ears and running laps around your brain. No drugs...honestly. When he got going and he was moving and just playing with his little machines, it was hypnotic and beautiful and transcendent and all the other words I'm leaving out because I'm already being redundant.
"Dream Pop" is the best genre I've ever heard to describe what they're doing. It really is remarkable.
After Gonzalez exited, part of the Philharmonic came on to play some compilation that Gonzalez and the conductor had chosen. And it was chill and it was quiet and it was dainty and beautiful and you can tell where I'm going with this or maybe you can't...
After the intermission, the orchestra came back on and played an 11 minute concierto -- I have no idea if that's the right word, am obviously too lazy to M-W or wiki it...and again, it was all the things I had previously mentioned. Finally, they came together, and the rest of the band came out to play divine "Moonchild" and then the band left, then they returned...and they kept going for a few songs and all I could think, all I was waiting for was for someone to blow the fucking roof off Disney. Because they were absolutely capable -- all the pieces were in place. Fuck, I heard it for the first three songs of the night. I wanted it so bad I was ready to scream it...and I immediately realized the mistake, looking around the stage, counting the 80 members of the Philharmonic plucking their strings and blowing their horns and I looked to the band of three and their technology and all their machines and call me new fashioned, but M83's incredibility is that so few can sound like such an army...and when you actually bring in an army to support them, it's defeating and hold-backing.
Now wait -- It was very good. I don't want to give the wrong impression because only a fool could find absence of beauty in the things I saw last night. I mean, honestly...a musical experience...
But it could have been so much better. In that tiny concert hall, with the sounds that were bouncing off those walls...and with the magic in those machines at Gonzalez' fingertips...I think it could have been the best I've ever seen. That was the potential that's stuck in my mind, and it's just dangling there, here, right fucking here. What does that mean? Well...
It was like a really good dry hand job. I'll take it and tell you it was really good...but in the future, we aim for progression.
Where does that leave me? I'll tell you exactly...
It's Sunday night and I can't move my body and I just finished the most genius dinner I've eaten in a long time -- PBJ burritos side egg whites and I'm thirsty and restless obviously because it's Sunday and all I can think...what drugs can I sell, how can I prostitute this rockin' body, how can I pander my literature into enough cash to pay for a puddle jump to Sydney to see them play the V on March 28th with The Killers? That's it...and it's gonna consume me because that's what happens, to me, in my life.
