M83, Ulrich Schnauss @ Lee's Palace

Tonight's in house, between sets music was pristine -- S3, JAMC, Loop, MBV. Talk about time flying while waiting for the bands to come on.

Ulrich Schnauss looks like a cross between Ashphodel label boss Naut Humon and former Inspiral Carpets vocalist Tom Hingley (it's the hair). He was the piano man for the night, madly tickling the MIDI ivories while his laptop seemed to handle the rest. Fortunately, he's got things sorted when it comes to volume ... OMG THERE'S SO MUCH SYNTH ... this should be the compulsory level of volume for all indietronic shoegazers. Although all the excessively shiny, bright synth sounds got to be a bit too much at times. Mostly, this was a straight run-through of "A Strangely Isolated Place", which in turn is a record that is difficult to stomach in one sitting due to all the shiny, bright SYNTH. There were points when I felt as though I was listening to the theme from Flashdance played at 3/4 speed.

I have a low quality bootleg of an M83 gig from last September. They sounded fairly flat, as the set suffered from a serious lack of energy. Some of that can be attributed to one specific problem, namely, the opposite of the Schnauss dilemna -- NOT ENOUGH SYNTH! How can you relegate the synth to the far background in "Run Into Flowers"? That song only works if you're drowning in that shit. In person, of course, the bass/drums beef things up considerably but the shortage of synth (and guitar) in the mix was a detriment to some of the songs. Also, the generally slower tempos (compared to the album version) hurt the faster cuts in particular, sapping them of some of their propulsive energy.

But when they're good, M83 are really really good. "Unrecorded" and "0078" were loud, tight, and noisy. "Teen Angst" even more so. But nothing tonight could touch "A Guitar and a Heart". Stripped of every last remnant of its Styx/Loverboy associations, it started as a krautrock jam from MAQ-era Stereolab, picking up a steroid-enhanced version of Arcade Fire's "Neighbourhoods #1" along the way, with the volume and intensity growing exponentially toward the end. That's an incredibly tough act to follow, but after a short sojourn off stage, Gonzalez returned for the Martin Gore moment of the show with "Safe", only to be joined by the entire band for the finish, as the song exploded into the full-on power ballad that is surely the song's true calling. Then, they finally delivered on their fine fine trebly noise promise with, fittingly enough, "Noise".

M83 are already at the point where they can play a 75 minute set with the quality control through the roof. Tonight felt like a greatest hits package, it really did. When the live show (good, with spectacular moments) catches up with the records (almost nothing but spectacular moments) then they'll be pretty much unstoppable.