M83: Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2LP) [MUTE]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set includes the nearly 18-minute title track made for the vinyl edition. Pitchfork ranked the album No. 22 among the 50 best shoegaze albums of all time, and it holds an 86 on Metacritic.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Bonus title track on side D

About the album

Photographer Justine Kurland's Snow Angels, the image on the cover, shows girls lying in the snow in a shadowy wood, and it's the perfect picture of what's inside: something that feels childlike and enormous at the same time.

Anthony Gonzalez and founding member Nicolas Fromageau built the record from synthesizers, guitar noise and crashing drums, a widescreen marriage of shoegaze and electronic music. "Run into Flowers" is the bright, soaring single, "America" carries sampled dialogue from the film Don't Look Now, "Unrecorded" and "In Church" swell like weather fronts, "Noise" lives up to its name, and "Beauties Can Die" closes the main album in a slow glow. Side D is given over entirely to the title piece, a long, drifting suite. The album first came out in Europe in April 2003 and reached North America the following summer.

Pitchfork later placed it at No. 188 on its list of the top 200 albums of the 2000s, and it laid the groundwork for the huge sound of Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. If you've ever wanted a record that sounds like the end credits of your own life, this one has the running time to match.

Also at Kops: more M83 on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Mute (cat# 9545-1 M83-2LP), a reissue of the 2003 album.