It’s not something that happens regularly, but there can be a gap betwen contemplating career sabotage and then going through with it. Anthony Gonzalez spent the run up to Fantasy‘s release telling outlets that in the wake of 2011’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming and it’s mega hit Midnight City he’s ever since felt pressure to replicate it, and on the evidence of 2014’s Junk it certainly seemed like his plan had been to run in the opposite direction.
A sprawling cloud of ideas and sounds, Fantasy isn’t however the excercise in quiet quitting stardom that Gonzalez may have originally been conceptualising. This is despite the cover art depicting a monster in a funny-not-ha-ha mask; the contents however are far less intimidating than that.
It is true to say that there are a few experimental oddities, particularly Kool Nuit and especially the Boards of Canada studying closer Dismemberment Bureau. If that’s a smaller part of the story, then the other lop-sided one underlines that Gonzalez still has the chops to make us glow. In this cocoon Amnesia, Radar, Far, Gone, Laura and Sunny Boy are all tokens of a songwriter who perhaps has given up on this thing less than he thinks. The multi-eyed ugly facemask wearing lady isn’t singing about M83 just yet.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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