Matthew Sheret

One solid memory; lying on my then girlfriend’s bed, hours after moving in, unwrapping Saturdays = Youth by M83 and playing it for the first time. I was, at first, disappointed; they seemed to have lost the bursts of static, the fear and spite of blighted childhood, and replaced it with a shiny surface. I was right, but it wasn’t a bad thing, not at all. The album said more about fragmentary characters and atmospheric stories than my Polaroid Press ever managed. It was a study in snapshots, lives played out over diary entries, soundscapes and the kind of disco Donnie Darko would have loved. I had been given the room to experience it, church-like, but about three minutes from the end of the final track she came in and told me to turn it down. Hindsight suggests I should have left there and then.

Second solid memory; sitting in church, watching M83, on a pew in front of Mark. He’d bought me Before The Dawn Heals Us as a chance birthday present, in the spirit of spreading the love. It was a perfect purchase. I assumed I would never be in a position to see them live, but this show and the one before it proved me wrong. M83. In a church. ‘In Church’. Beautiful. The music exists within the tension between reverence and expression, between throwing punches and being restrained. M83 make me look up. M83 make me lie on a bed, suspending my arms and legs above the floor, feeling weightless. M83 are the closest I get to prayer.