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- Moon Safari (1998)
- Premiers Symptômes EP (1999)
- The Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score) (2000)
- 10000 Hz Legend (2001)
Moon Safari (1998)
7.5
La Femme d’Argent / Sexy Boy / All I Need / Kelly, Watch the Stars / Talisman / Remember / You Make It Easy / Ce Matin La / New Star in the Sky (Chanson Pour Solal) / Le Voyage de Penelope
One of 1998’s biggest hypes, French duo Air stormed
the charts and numerous best of-lists of both critics and avid music
fans. On their debut album, Nicolas Godin (bass, guitar, various keyboards)
and Jean-Benoit Dunckel (dozens of keyboards), with the aid of several session
musicians, successfully combine dreamy electro-pop, Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin-ambient,
campy soundtracks and lush orchestrations into an organic, easy listenable
whole. The album’s well-known tracks “Sexy Boy” and “Kelly,
Watch the Stars” are examples of the album on its poppiest. The first
song is trance-like, has some manipulated robotic-sounding vocals (done by
Dunckel and Godin, although they sound female), a melancholy Moog solo and
some nonsensical lyrics:“Où sont tes héros aux corps d’athlètes,
où sont tes idoles mal rasées, bien habillées”
(“Where are your heroes with athlete’s bodies, where are your
badly shaven, well-dressed heroes”). The other song (which has a funny
ping-pong video clip to accomapny it) is even more catchy, a bouncy pop song
you’ll immediately hum along to.
Two other highlights are the lengthy opening track “La Femme d’Argent,”
a great example of the duo at their most spacey, given the amount of eerie
bleeps, Moog, soft strings, funky bass and hints of 60’s camp. “Talisman”
is a marvellous cinematic song that starts off very sober, but adds layer
after layer (keys, pulsating bass, synths, drums, etc) until the drama is
unleashed (after about 2 minutes). “All I Need” and “You
Make It Easy” have seductive vocals by Beth Hirsch, could very well
serve as the soundtrack to an arty soft porn movie (is it a dirty mind at
work?), and are enjoyable. This last adjective can also be applied to the
remainder of the album, but unfortunately there’s not much else to mention.
“Remember” is a short little ditty and funny because of the French
accent, “New Star in the Sky” is decent lounge-pop to chill-out
to, and both “Ce Matin Là” and “Le Voyage de Penelope”
are unremarkable cinematic tunes that betray some Morricone-influence, especially
the first one with the picked guitar and the use of harmonica.
Moon Safari’s best moments are ideally suited for relaxation, since
there’s absolutely no ingredient that’s bound to upset you. Moreover,
some of the songs could easily qualify as aural treats, because of their gracious
elegance, soothing melodies and lush instrumentations. Even the less impressive
songs on the album are fun to listen to, but more in a background kind of
way. They’re like wall-paper: after a while, you no longer notice the
pattern.
Premiers Symptômes EP (1999)
7
Modular Mix / Casanova 70 / Les Professionnels / J'ai Dormi Sous L'Eau
/ Le Soleil Est Près de Moi / Californie / Brakes On
Even
though the French duo became known by the public at large after the 1998 release
of their debut Moon Safari, a refreshing ambient electro-pop album
that succeeded in uniting Anglo-saxon and continental influences (ranging
from Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy, Bacharach and Mancini, Kraftwerk and
Jean Jarré to Massive Attack and Kruder & Dorfmeister), they'd already been
tinkering and refining their sound for a few years. Premiers Symptomes
basically gathers the material that was released in the two years preceding
Moon Safari, on different labels and for different occasions (some
of this previously appeared on a label sampler). Even though there's a less
song-oriented approach (in fact, it took me several listens to be able to
distinguish these songs from one another), the seeds of the successful debut
album are already here. There's a reliance on vintage keyboards (Moog, Rhodes,
Korg, etc), while the soundtrack-styled, laidback vibe has more in common
with the music of Broadcast, Stereolab and Massive Attack than most other
French acts at the time, like Etienne de Crécy (who produced "Modular" and
"Les Professionels") or Daft Punk. As such, the duo succeeds in fusing analogue
and digital elements into a warm, fluffy blanket of sound - comfy keyboard
sounds, serene beats, swaying basses and the occasional muffled horn - that's
an aural delight. Since this music was (or seemed to be) more about vibe than
anything else, you won't be focusing on structures, melodies and choruses,
which aren't the core of the music to begin with. By result, the first five
songs will glide by as if they're one extended composition, although the semi-legendary
"Le Soleil Est Près de Moi" - easily recognisable because it's the only track
featuring vocals - does offer the purest distillation of their approach. The
final two songs (which are bonus tracks that were added to earlier editions),
and especially "Brakes On," disrupt the mood and tempo a bit by offering a
louder, more 'aggressive' style, but modern technology will undoubtedly offer
a solution: SKIP!
The Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score) (2000)
7
Playground Love / Clouds Up / Bathroom Girl / Cemetry Party / Dark Messages / The Word 'Hurricane' / Dirty Trip / Highschool Lover - Theme from The Virgin Suicides / Afternoon Sister / Ghost Song / Empty House / Dead Bodies / Suicide Underground
Rarely
has a soundtrack been a better companion to a movie than in the case of Air's
music and Sophie Coppola's directorial debut The Virgin Suicides. The
stylishly sleek electro-lounge of the French duo was destined to be used as
a film score someday, but it's as if Coppola's dreamy portrayal of teen angst
and emotional complexity - an adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' successful
novel - could only have existed with this music. Her ultra-precise, sensitive
and visually intriguing style of story-telling finds a like-minded companion
in the designer-pop of Air: their use of space, minimal beats, analogue keyboards
and minor key chords gives the movie a modern and trendy, yet timeless quality
that creates an effect an assembly of then contemporary rock songs wouldn't
have provided. Just like the movie's tone is consistent, yet never tangible
enough to pinpoint, so does Air's music usually retain a mystifying quality,
an unwillingness to give away the emotional depth that might be buried beneath
the layers of meticulously stacked sound blankets. The difference between
an album like Moon Safari and this one is that the music serves the
movie - despite the fact it's also an integral part of it and is even to a
large part responsible for its success - and that Godin and Dunckel were already
given the images to which the music needed to be set. As such, the soundtrack
is less 'substantial' and less concerned with telling structured stories than
their debut album, which despite all other categorisations was still a pop
album with "songs". Apart from opening track "Playground Love" - which is
a wonderfully executed piece of pensive dream-pop that sounds like Sparklehorse
covering mid-70s Pink Floyd, with guest vocals by a certain Gordon Tracks
and an appropriately cool tenor sax solo by Hugo Ferran - there aren't
any real 'songs' on the album. Instead, you get short mood pieces that help
creating the necessary vibe - usually the same one. Even though it's hard
to put one's finger on it, the entire movie (one of the most stunning portrayals
of growing up girls that must've been created) oozes an atmosphere of chilly
unease, a need for more humanity and these instrumentals accentuate just that.
With their stock of keyboards, drums, bass, guitars and (occasionally) string
arrangements, the two create music that's sometimes funky and sometimes instantly
memorable (you're not gonna get the movie's main theme out of your head),
but always pensive and the minor-key aural equivalent of a misty mountain
morning. As such, it's hard to point out highlights (apart from "Playground
Love") and not very likely you'll enjoy the soundtrack all the way through.
Just like the movie would be totally different without this score, the score
lacks substance without the visuals. It's a bit like hot chocolate sauce -
delicious when sampled, but only fantastic when you have it with ice cream.
10000 Hz Legend (2001)
5.5
Electronic Performers / How Does It Make You Feel? / Radio #1 / The Vagabond / Radian / Lucky and Unhappy / Sex Born Poison / People in the City / Wonder Milky Bitch / Don't Be Light / Caramel Prisoner
It'll
only take you a few seconds into "Electronic Performers" and its digital beats
to realize that 10000 Hz Legend will not be pigeonholed as another
standard Air album. The human vs. machine / analogue vs. digital / emotion
vs. lack of it-match-ups have always been recurring oppositions in Air's oeuvre,
but it seems that the balance has finally titled to the latter ends, as the
electronics become more dominant, the vocals less human and the general reliance
on technology and outside guests larger. Perhaps this thematic/stylistic stress
is the result of a quest to make more meaningful music, to explore current-day
topics like alienation, artificial intelligence in a way bands like Radiohead
and Grandaddy ("Jed the Humanoid," etc) have also touched upon several times.
Whereas Air's previous albums revelled in their meticulously considered balance
of comfy retro and cool futurism, they've almost become a modern Kraftwerk
on some of these tracks, reverting to lengthy, monotonous drags or epics that
not only lack direction, but also a substantial grandeur. "How Does It Make
You Feel?," for instance, works well as a sonic product, but falls flat as
a song. Too bad it's not particularly innovative either, as that could've
partially made up for the blandness. The opening salvo is nothing, however,
compared to the stupefying triteness of "Radio #1," which can't make up its
mind: pursue a fake plastic Euro-disco direction (something Amanda Lear could
cover) or get trimmed down to a BBC Radio 1 jingle (something it the song
itself hints at, with a "radio host" singing along to the song towards the
end). It's simplistic electro-pop, kitsch lacking humour, a hollow reference
frame and lacking the instantly likeable melancholy of their previous releases.
More
guests appear on this album than on any other Air-album (nine out of eleven
songs feature vocals - usually by outsiders), the only mainstream star being
jack of all trades Beck Hansen, whom they should've kept at a distance, as
"The Vagabond" - on which he's most prominent (and God, how I hate that harmonica
bit) - is completely taken over by him; dismantled folk-rock embellished with
hints of electronica and handclaps, steered in a direction that completely
lacks any hint of Air's earlier identity. There's nothing as disastrous or
painful as "Radio #1" here, but the duo did include some songs that would
have never passed the bullshit-test on Moon Safari or any other of
their releases. "Wonder Milky Bitch" only succeeds of you expect it to be
a sub-par Gainsbourg pastiche, complete with silly cowboy-effects and a pseudo-sleazy
narrator's baritone, while "Don't Be Light" sounds as if Dunckel & Godin took
too much psychedelic drugs and merely switch from section to section, never
settling for anything particularly interesting, as if expecting something
to appear out of thin air. Ironically, this approach (allowing too many ideas
to be used) is simply directionless and repetitive, resulting in an incoherent
60-minute platter of leftover ideas that can only be redeemed if you're looking
for top-notch production values. Luckily, there are some songs that
are worthwhile, such as the lightweight instrumental sympho-pop of "Radian"
that evokes the earlier work, and the subsequent "Lucky and Unhappy," a subtly
addictive pulse featuring the breathy/sexy vocals of chanteuse Lisa
Papineau. On 10000 Hz Legend, Air attempt to broaden their sound -
and the sheer fact that they're refusing to be classified, stereotyped and
revert to ye olde tricks is, in a way, quite admirable - but the problem
is that they lost their focus, the cohesiveness of before and their critical
spirit. In other words: they lowered the bar, which resulted in a messy, inconsistent
and frustrating album on which technology seems to have the last word.
Note: Is it a coincidence the album cover always reminds me of Rush's Hemispheres? Didn't think so.
Read album reviews of similar or related artists: Broadcast