M83

For most of us, our teenage years were an awkward time full of embarrassing moments we’d rather forget. For M83’s chief stargazer Anthony Gonzalez, however, his adolescence turned out to be the most important period of his life, one he looks back upon with great affection. Now, he’s made it the defining theme of his enchanting new album, Saturdays=Youth. “I loved being a teenager,” says Gonzalez, who, at 26, only stopped being one seven years ago. “That’s when I discovered music and started to take drugs and party with my friends. I really started to discover new things. Nowadays I would like to be a teenager again.”

The idea of youth – wasted, gilded or otherwise – has featured prominently in M83’s music. From early fumblings like “At The Party” on 2001’s self-titled debut to the bliss-fuzz of “Teen Angst” from 2005’s breakthrough album Before The Dawn Heals Us, the French producer’s dramatic space-rock tends to evoke the innocence and wonder of this hormonally charged time. Saturdays=Youth is his most explicit celebration yet of how it feels to be dazed, confused and 15 years old. “Saturday is definitely the coolest day of the week for a teenager and that’s the reason Saturday is in the title,” he says, “Saturday always reminds everyone of their youth.”