What constitutes a real quality dream and separates it from the rest of subconscious sleep? “Drifting off the plane of reality,” or “sensation combination” typically resonate with me. Anthony Gonzales, M83 mastermind, crafts that feel over and over again in the much anticipated double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. As an exploration of dreaming, both subconscious and goal driven, the album is near infallible. Musically some of the choices may appear questionable, but the concept execution remains immaculate. The surreal and tangible meet to form an irresistible experience of an impossible yet imaginable reality.

The epic scope of the soaring synths and longing vocal explorations throughout the album could soundtrack any variety of sleeping musings, whether completely sensational, or founded on unrealistic goals. First single “Midnight City” opens with a beat driven by confusing yet captivating vocal screeches that have been washed in filters. The music video for the song, released concurrently with the album, portrays a group of kids with supernatural powers, escaping and playing with their abilities in an abandoned warehouse. The eerie surreal feel that Matthew Dear so elegantly shared on his most recent work, Black City, comes out in M83’s release as well. Each song holds a story with it, each a constructed individual dreamscape.

Not always eerie, sometimes it gets flat out strange. “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” features a young girl sharing a story about magic frogs. The childish intrigue and genuine belief in her story suspends reality completely. Her mommy really did become her daddy, there is not an ounce of doubt. It’s the complete immersion and belief put into the album that allows it to so thoroughly succeed.

Not all of the album carries this strange twang though. Standout track “Wait” captures a more sedated, sensational, longing, but finally fulfilled musing. Some of the vocal play is akin to Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House – soft, searching arrangements that leave a tone of vague detail and mystery. The suspenseful, yet calm and calculated kind of teetering you just know is going to end well.

Transitions and “filler” content on the double disc span never drag. Each interlude feels through another universe and explores more obscure crevices of the brain; some even stand alone incredibly well. Smooth slides between tracks akin to Cut Copy’s Ghost in Colours are there, but often the jump is sudden, waking and re-entering the subconscious through a trap door right into the action instead of through the grand hall entrance with an introduction. The second disc of the album achieves both types of transitions incredibly successfully. Although it has fewer standalone giants, the dream theme holds much truer as a concept throughout the second half.

How much of a concept album hides behind an idea instead of truly standing on the music? Sometimes this may feel like a concern, but does it really matter? Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming often excels in both aspects, captures the best of both worlds. It seamlessly integrates the real world and the extraordinary dreams and passions, still remaining musically relevant and interesting. Escaping the scenes of its created dimensions and supplanting the feelings in a new, unknown territory to explore allows for packed emotions and new realizations to collide into each other headlong.

Track “Echoes of Mine” beautifully sums up many of the expressions through the album as an old, weathered woman reflects in French:

It’s late. I am looking at my other me, and I take a path I do not know:
a small path along the factories and the city-from cutting through the forest.
I am just beginning to glimpse nature, when suddenly, night falls.
I am immersed in a world of silence, yet I am not afraid.
I fall asleep within minutes, at most, and when I wake up,
the sun is there and the forest shines a bright light.

I recognize that forest. This is not an ordinary forest is a forest of memories.
My memories. This river, white noise, my adolescence.
These great trees, the men I loved. These birds flying in the distance, my father disappeared.
My memories are not memories.
They are there, living near me, and entwined they dance, sing and smile at me.

I look at my hands. I caress my face, and I have 20 years.
And I love like I never loved.

(translated by Google Translate)

Rating: 8.7/9.6
Tracks: Midnight City, Wait, Raconte-Moi Une Histoire, OK Pal, Another Wave From You, Steve McQueen, Echoes of Mine
RIYL: Matthew Dear, Grizzly Bear, Destroyer, Cut Copy