M83, “Fantasy.”

Following diversions into ’80s camp on 2016’s Junk and into fantasy films and video games with 2019’s Digital Shades Vol. II, French multi-instrumentalist Anthony Gonzalez takes his shoegazy project M83 even further down the rabbit hole on the appropriately titled Fantasy, an album that seems to cherrypick certain bits from his previous work and expand on them.

The movement of Fantasy (his ninth M83 album) as a whole makes it suitable to be a soundtrack of a story not yet written. That makes sense given Gonzalez’s work scoring films. Rather than building around radio singles, this music ebbs and flows like water. But at the same time, he rekindles the meandering dreamscapes of 2005’s Before the Dawn Heals Us on tracks like the seven-minute closer “Dismemberment Bureau,” the dopamine-induced euphoria of 2011’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming on “Ocean’s Niagara” and the campy quirk of Junk in the second movement of eight-minute epic “Kool Suit,” with its whirring bleeps and bloops.

All of that is tied together in signature M83 sounds: gauzy synths, crescendoing choruses and heart-stopping sonic emotion. There are lyrics scattered throughout the album—and Gonzalez has called this album his most personal yet—but they’re often buried in the mix and serve more as an additional instrument, sonic texture or even a directive than actual story lines. “Ocean’s Niagara,” for instance, has just two words, “beyond adventure!” scattered throughout guitar-propelled melodies and sonic washes of synth. The song is meant to connect you with your own sense of longing, with you filling in your own blanks in a narrative. Few music artists do this as well as Gonzalez in M83.

The following song, “Amnesia,” is the other album song that may find a home in bite-sized single culture. It’s equally uptempo and nostalgic, with a reverb-laden guitar riff, squelchy synth, string-like keyboard runs and chorus-effect vocals, including female vocals probably courtesy of bandmate Kaela Sinclair.

“I’m in love with he darkness/ It’s just a sound/ Nothing wrong with some sadness,” Gonzalez sings on one of the only songs on the album with a traditional narrative structure.

The record’s strength is how naturally each song fits snugly into the next and how it unfurls. The music is largely electronic, but it feels organic. The album opens on the wistful “Water Deep,” which begins with a sole acoustic guitar repeating the same progression and feels like the break of dawn until the wall of sound descends in a haze and transports listeners somewhere new. No words are spoken, nor are they needed. That leads into the aforementioned “Ocean’s Niagara,” with its two words.

“Us and the Rest” and “Earth to Sea” both recall some of the deeper cuts from Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, where Gonzalez seems to be stuck in a daydream. The five-and-a-half-minute former song, underscored by twinkling piano keys, doesn’t take long to explode in a cacophonous mix of synths and shouted vocals. The latter is poppier pushes past six and a half minutes. On this one, like on much of the album, guitar takes the lead and is more noticeable than on the past couple M83 albums.

Gonzalez pushed the sweet blend of soft acoustic guitar strumming and piano chords to the forefront on “Radar, Far, Gone.” Take away the light synths and angelic vocalizations, and this could pass for a Coldplay song circa 2004. If the song sounds like twilight, following tune “Deceiver ” cements that notion by starting with a morning birdsong. That’s followed by alien-sound synths and hand drumming, developing at a glacial pace and the beat not dropping until nearly three minutes in.

Distant chants begin the title track before a disco rhythm section and pan flute enter the picture. The melody pitches up a step and spacey synths enter the picture. It’s not a traditional dance track, though, as it cuts away from the driving melody. Following another ruminative song, “Laura,” the album begins its final build-up with “Sunny Boy.” The dream-pop song goes 0 to 60 at the 90-second mark and arrives at the foot of the album’s epic magnum opus, “Kool Nuit,” which translates as “Cool Night” from French.

Its first movement is orchestral and slightly mysterious, extenuating the minor notes. French female vocals enter the picture just before the two-minute mark, and the song turns jazzy, with light woodsy percussion. A minute later this romantic facade falls away as the orchestral instrumentation is suddenly replaced by 8-bit bloops and choppy drumming, going into a full-on electronic freak-out; and then seemingly into the heart of a wind tunnel.

“Sunny Boy Part 2,” the penultimate song that precedes “Dismemberment Bureau,” is the descent following the album’s crescendo. It’s a completely instrumental one- or two-note drone, but it’s hard not to picture Freddie Mercury breaking through from the afterlife and operatically declaring, “It’s a beautiful Day-hay!”

There is no “Midnight City” on Fantasy. There are no fun sax solos that’ll get stuck in your ear for months on end. Anthony Gonzalez has probably spent years avoiding that. No one song stands far above the rest, which is also likely the goal. What M83 has in Fantasy is an album that needs to be appreciated in full, but one that’s a trip rather than a chore.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.