French electronic and early-2000’s cult heroes M83 have announced their latest album DSVII, set to release on Sept. 20 via Mute Records.
The follow-up to 2016’s Junk, the band’s forthcoming album serves as the successor to 2007’s largely instrumental Digital Shades Vol. I and draws heavy influence from “early videogame soundtracks, ‘80s sci-fi/fantasy films and analog synth pioneers.”
“At first there was this vivid memory of Dungeons and Dragons, this childhood sensation of living in an imaginary world set in a faraway past or a lost future,” Gonzalez explained on the band’s website. “I wanted to create some music that could be part of this adventure and journey with all of its solitary knights, dreamy landscapes, strange animals, forgotten myths and old spells.”
The album was written during a period of mental and physical exhaustion following founding member Anthony Gonzalez’s compositional work with Cirque du Soleil and the end of the band’s international tour for Junk. To cope, Gonzalez spent the summer of 2017 swimming, watching older films and playing ‘80s videogames in coastal France—where the “simple and imperfect” inklings of the album began to form.
Alongside René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, Gonzalez lists Nobuo Uematsu’s score for Final Fantasy, Koji Kondo’s score The Legend of Zelda and Koichi Sugiyama’s work on Dragon Quest as major influences for DSVII.
