Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (stylised as HurryUp,We'reDreaming.) is the sixth studio album by French electronic music band M83. The album was released on 18 October 2011, by Naïve Records in France and Mute Records in the United States. It is M83's last album with keyboardist Morgan Kibby and the band's first full double album. The album has received generally favourable reviews from critics. It debuted at number 15 on the US "Billboard" 200 with first-week sales of 21,000 copies, becoming M83's highest-charting album to date. It had sold  300,000 copies in the United States as of March 2016. The album was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 2013 Grammy Awards and was ranked number 134 on "Pitchfork" list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 2010s" in October 2019. Production. Background and recording. Prior to recording "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming", Anthony Gonzalez moved from his native France to Los Angeles. Describing the move in an interview, Gonzalez said: "Having spent 29 years of my life in France, I moved to California a year and a half before the making of this album and I was  excited and inspired by so many different things: by the landscape, by the way of life, by live shows, by movies, by the road trips I took alone... I was feeling alive again and this is, I feel, something that you can hear on the album." Gonzalez's tour with the Killers, Depeche Mode, and Kings of Leon in addition to his road trips to Joshua Tree National Park heavily influenced the album. Gonzalez cited the ambitiousness of albums such as The Smashing Pumpkins' album "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" as the reason he made "Hurry Up, We're  Dreaming" a double album. In addition, he described the two discs as brother and sister, with each track having a sibling on the other disc. The album was recorded in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound and The Sound Factory. Because of budget constraints and union issues, the string and brass players who contributed to the album were not paid and were credited with pseudonyms. Gonzalez recorded the album as a way to remember his childhood. Gonzalez explained to "Spin" magazine that "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" is "mainly about dreams, how everyone is different, how you dream differently when you 're a kid, a teenager, or an adult. I'm really proud of it. If you're doing a very long album, all the songs need to be different and I think I've done that with this one." In an interview with "musicOMH", he described the album as "a reflection of my 30 years as a human being" and something he dedicated to himself. Style. Gonzalez described the album's sound as a mix between the synth-pop of "Saturdays = Youth" (2008) and the more ambient work of "Before the Dawn Heals Us" (2005). Additionally, the album uses  instruments not found on previous M83 albums, such as the acoustic guitar, flute and saxophone. "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" also features contributions from Medicine's Brad Laner and Zola Jesus. Critics have noted musical influences from 1980s artists such as Kraftwerk, Simple Minds, Peter Gabriel and Harold Faltermeyer, as well as contemporary electronic artists such as Cut Copy. Release. "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" was first teased on 23 June 2011 in a YouTube video titled "Echoes...", which also announced North American tour dates. The album's lead single, "Midnight City", premiered online on 19 July 2011, and was  officially released on 16 August 2011. On 10 October 2011, the album was streamed in its entirety on the Urban Outfitters website. Urban Outfitters also hosted a simultaneous listening party at all of its stores the Saturday before "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" release. On 17 October 2011, a music video for "Midnight City" was released. On 30 May 2012, a music video for the album's second single, "Reunion", was released. The video is a follow-up to the "Midnight City" music video. M83 released a music video for "Steve McQueen" on 25 October 2012. On 5 November 2012 , a three-disc deluxe edition featuring remixes of "Midnight City", "Reunion" and "Steve McQueen" was announced. On 5 December 2012, a music video for "Wait" was released. The track "Outro" was used as the backing music for the extended trailer created for the film "Cloud Atlas" as well as many other trailers and films over the following years. Critical reception. "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76, based on 38 reviews. "Pitchfork"s  Ian Cohen gave "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" a "Best New Music" designation and dubbed it the band's best record thus far, noting the reduction of the "heavily saturated synths" of Anthony Gonzalez's earlier work in favour of more accessible songs and adding that "the traditionally structured songs here are some of the most thrilling pop music released this year." Similarly, "The Daily Telegraph"s James Lachno felt that the album "finally fuses his innate ingenuity with an accessible, commercial edge." Rudy Klapper of Sputnikmusic complimented the influence of 1980s music on "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming", calling the  record "near flawless, an essential distillation of the sounds of Gonzalez's youth, nostalgia and melancholy and happiness all mixed up into a sparkling pop stew." "The Independent" critic Simon Price praised it as "a towering city of sparkling synth edifices simultaneously summoning the best of the 1980s (New Order, The Cure) and the current breed (The Knife, Empire of the Sun)". "Under the Radar"s Laura Studarus described "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" as a "remarkable accomplishment" and a "double album of stunningly ambitious, synth-soaked dreams". In a review for the "NME", Jamie Crossan compared the album's "guileless  and dreamy" nature to the title character of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella "The Little Prince" and admitted that such would be "quite a bold statement to make, but this is an album of equal valor." Reef Younis of BBC Music felt that while "some consistency may have been sacrificed in favor of a space-filling selection of tracks, this set still represents a heaving, breathing journey through the introspective and the bombastic, the striving and the exhaustive. It is the undeniable sound of one man's triumphant dreams." Heather Phares of AllMusic stated that while "Hurry Up , We're Dreaming" "may not be quite as striking as "Saturdays = Youth", it delivers a welcome mix of classic sounds and promising changes." David Marchese of "Spin" felt that "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" is "full of goose-bump moments", but that the "lack of something as enjoyably plain (and relatively calm) as 'Kim & Jessie'... makes Gonzalez's insistence on oversize emotions feel a tad restrictive." In a similarly mixed assessment, Timothy Gabriele of "PopMatters" criticised the band for "focusing too much on magnitude throughout and too little on depth" on the album, but noted that the "totality of  sound" on the album "has a way of blinding even the most critical listener to the problems that underline many of the album's lesser songs". "The A.V. Club"s Christian Williams found the album underwhelming, concluding that "for an album of such impressive scale and nanoscopic attention to detail, leaves a surprisingly light impression." Kevin Liedel of "Slant Magazine" criticised the album for rehashing sounds from earlier M83 albums and felt that it sounded "much more like an M83 wannabe's poor imitation than the real deal." Accolades. "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" appeared on several end-of-year lists . "Filter" named it the best album of 2011. "Paste" named "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" the ninth best album of 2011, writing "As with everything the Frenchman's done so far, the album is lush and ably produced, crescendo after crescendo." "Pitchfork" named it the third best album of 2011, with Jayson Greene writing: ""Hurry Up We're Dreaming" doesn't just draw liberally from the spirit of the massive rock albums Gonzalez name-checked, it practically swallows them whole, regurgitating and redistributing them into something listeners from every corner of the music universe can hear a piece of their  lives in." "Popmatters" ranked "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" number five on its list of "The 75 Best Albums of 2011", while "Spin" ranked the album number 19 on its end-of-year list. Online music retailer eMusic ranked the album number two on its Best Albums of 2011 list. The track "Midnight City" has been singled out for praise. "Paste" named it the second-best song of the year. PopMatters named the track the best song of 2011, with Ryan Reed writing: "On this transcendent standout [...] Anthony Gonzalez and co-synth-scientist Justin Meldal-Johnsen build layer upon layer  of keys, arena-sized drums, and vocal atmospherics (not mentioning one of the tastiest sax solos this side of a Springsteen record). The result? The synth Sistine Chapel." Tour. Prior to the tour, Gonzalez posted an open audition on the M83 website for a multi-instrumentalist who could play guitar, bass and keyboards to join him on tour. Sparta Township, New Jersey native Jordan Lawlor won the audition. The tour for "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" began in Mexico City on 15 October 2011 and ended on 1 December 2011 in London, England. A second leg of the tour began  on 12 January 2012 in Los Angeles and was originally going to end on 8 August 2012 in New York City. During this second leg, M83 performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on 13 and 20 April, at the St Jerome's Laneway Festival in Australia and New Zealand, and at Lollapalooza in Chicago. The tour was later extended and ended in London on 8 November. Track listing. All songs composed by Anthony Gonzalez. Additional music composition by Justin Meldal-Johnsen. Additional lyrics by Yann Gonzalez, Morgan Kibby and Brad Laner. Deluxe edition disc three Personnel. Credits  adapted from the liner notes of "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming".