Songs are almost afterthoughts for Anthony Gonzalez, the songwriter, singer, guitarist and keyboardist behind the French band M83.
He’s after enthrallment instead, and on Saturday night at Irving Plaza he had time to be sweeping. M83 is touring as the opening act for the Killers, and was on the bill at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night. But as the headliner at the club, M83 opened for itself with an introductory set of ambient music, pulling listeners further into its otherworldly domain. The band is named after a galaxy.
Anthony Gonzalez, whose band, M83, is named after a galaxy, performing an ambient set at Irving Plaza. His otherworldly music revolves around enveloping sounds, repeated patterns and monumental crescendos.
M83’s music revolves around enveloping sounds and repeated patterns. Mr. Gonzalez started the ambient set alone onstage, drawing abstract swoops and tones from an analog synthesizer. Then, using his laptop, he surrounded them with majestic chords from a phantom string orchestra and from a simulated church organ. The rest of the four-piece band joined him in the first of the concert’s monumental crescendos. Mr. Gonzalez builds his music with the stately descending chords of classical passacaglias, with rippling Minimalistic ostinatos, with progressive-rock pomp, with a dance pulse or with the steady blips of electro. He shares many of his raw materials with bands like Sigur Ros, Pink Floyd and New Order, but M83 brings to them a certain delicacy and diffidence, as if it’s always aware that its dream worlds are fragile.
