Chapter 1
20 Years Of Air: 5 Of Their Finest Moments
We don't talk about Air enough these days.
Sure, their latest output might seem second-rate when stacked up against their classic albums. But their best songs – of which there are a staggering amount – remain elegant and exciting, years on from their release.
There are tons of amazing French pop acts who utilise vintage synths and sophisticated pop melodies to set slinky moods and elevate the class levels in any given room. But the fully-formed, easily digestible grooves of Air appealed to a
If you're new to Air, or you've let your fandom lapse in recent years, here are a few reminders of the genius of this impossibly cool French duo.
Chapter 2
‘La Femme D'argent’ (Moon Safari, 1998)
Do you remember the first time you heard Air?
Perhaps you heard the intriguing space-pop of ‘Sexy Boy' on the radio. Or maybe watched the sweet skater love story that played out in the film clip for ‘All I Need'. Perhaps they were on the stereo in a café, a bar or at a house party.
There's a good chance your first exposure came via their 1998 debut Moon Safari and it's possible this is the only Air album you own.
No matter how strong your feelings for this band are, you can hopefully appreciate that this is one of the great pop albums of the 1990s.
Intelligent, but accessible, it crossed over to a larger audience than many would expect – perhaps a case of ‘right place, right time' given the burgeoning boom in downtempo electronica – but has proven to earn its popularity as its songs retain their relevance so many years later.
This makes it hard to choose a song to start with, so we'll just start at the start.
Opening your debut album with a seven-minute song would almost always be considered an ambitious move. But, as ‘La Femme D'argent' proves, not every seven-minute song is an epic.
Air have a gentle touch and used it to ease us into their debut with this super slinky instrumental. The moment that bass line surreptitiously slides in after 25 seconds or so, you know you're in for a kind of space-age retro-futurist-pop journey.
“I wanted to do just ten minutes of that bass riff, but JB said we should put something else on it,” Nicolas Godin quipped in a RBMA lecture in 2015.
Its deep groove, impossibly cool freeform Rhodes piano solo, shimmering organ and spacey synth sounds amalgamate to create something that feels both warmly familiar and sleekly cold at the same time.
It's a perfect introduction to a stunning album and, for many of us, a perfect introduction to what would become a fascinating career.
Chapter 3
‘Playground Love’ (The Virgin Suicides, 2000)
‘Playground Love' would easily have worked on Moon Safari. Given that it was the first new material most of us had heard in the wake of that huge record, it was a pleasing but not entirely surprising track when it was released in 2000.
While Air mightn't have shocked us with this track, they continued to dazzle.
It's easy to just focus on the saxophone when talking about ‘Playground Love'. It's so breathy and sultry. But there's so much more to it than that.
The song features perhaps Air's finest ever vocal melody, thanks to their old buddy, Phoenix lead singer Thomas Mars who appears under the nom de plume Gordon Tracks. The strings that drone behind the song are impossibly beautiful, their arrangement both sophisticated and comfortingly modest.
‘Playground Love' appears as the opening track on the soundtrack they composed for Sofia Coppola's film The Virgin Suicides. A bold move for a second record, but a good opportunity for Air to show that their music has the potential to be versatile.
Chapter 4
‘How Does It Make You Feel’ (10,000 Hz Legend, 2001)
After releasing their outstanding debut and a brilliant soundtrack project, the pressure was on Air to deliver with 2001's 10,000 Hz Legend.
It was an important album, because it wasn't Moon Safari Mk II. It sent the message that they were evolving and that they were interested in sustaining their career as inventive and innovative musicians, rather than resting on their laurels after one great record.
Despite that, the record was pretty universally considered a step back for the duo. Whether that was due to the audience's expectations or the band's eagerness to prove there was more to them than what Moon Safari suggested, we'll probably never full ascertain.
But it had plenty of wondrous moments and ‘How Does It Make You Feel' is one of the finest.
“The rest of the album is too complicated,” Godin told RBMA when discussing ‘How Does It Make You Feel'.
The juxtaposition of their ethereally beautiful harmonies and the harsh robotic voice in ‘How Does It Make You Feel' are clear examples of the quirks that make Air so much more than a couple of smart French dudes who knew how to get played in cafes and on make-up commercials.
It could easily have been a more palatable pop tune. The chorus hook is memorable and, as always, the instrumental (and choral, in this case) production is top-notch. But using that jarring, disembodied computer voice meant Air were following their creative instincts more than their commercial ones.
“We always were happy to use gadgets and classical instruments at the same time,” Godin told RBMA. “Because there were traditional records and there was electronic music, but we wanted to mix them all together.”
The song ends with a female computer voice saying, ‘Well, I really think you should quit smoking', assumedly in response to the titular question that runs through the song. It's a moment of levity that's relatively common throughout Air's work.
“We don't want to do things too seriously,” Godin said. “We don't want to be pretentious. I think the worst thing, when you make a piece of art, is to be pretentious. So we always used humour to calm down when we made something too pompous.”
Chapter 5
‘Alone In Kyoto’ (Talkie Walkie, 2004)
Air's third album, 2004's Talkie Walkie, didn't quite reach the same size audience as Moon Safari. But you could argue it's an even finer piece of work than their acclaimed debut.
The breezy pop of ‘Cherry Blossom Girl' and the dark, focused guitar pop of ‘Surfing On A Rocket' stood tall among the duo's work thus far. And they signified something of a more focused evolution in their sound than 10,000 Hz Legend provided.
It's important to refrain from hyperbole as best you can when writing about music. But ‘Alone In Kyoto' is perhaps the best song Air have ever written.
There's not a single note that doesn't add to the unique, somewhat eerie yet still somehow comforting feel of the song.
It's the kind of song you could play to the vast majority of people on this planet and they will find beauty in it. The way each note fizzes and pops, the way the song builds and builds, each element of the song serving a completely different musical purpose, but all of them equally essential to the piece as a whole.
The very sounds the duo utilise are truly magical; the flickering electro blips that introduce the song, the interconnected arpeggio melodies of the synth and guitar that fill the majority of the space, the fast pulsing synth bass that delicately anchors the chorus are all magnificent.
But it's that dense, warm, rich sounding piano that shines most. It's the one instrument playing more than one note at a time, but it moves slower than everything else so not to overwhelm us.
It really is a beautiful song.
Not to labour the Sofia Coppola connection, but it just so happens that two of the absolute best songs in Air's entire career have appeared in her films.
Chapter 6
‘Seven Stars’ (Le Voyage Dans La Lune, 2012)
Air's collaboration with vocalists outside of the group generally end up sounding sublime. The duo clearly know what their song needs and are able to communicate that to the singers pretty effectively.
But that doesn't mean the results all end up sounding the same.
‘Seven Stars' is from Le Voyage Dans La Lune, the 2012 soundtrack the duo constructed for the re-released version of Georges Méliès 1902 silent film A Trip To The Moon.
It features Beach House vocalist Victoria Legrand, a seemingly natural fit with Air (and not because she was born in France). But Perhaps the most notable thing about the track is that it doesn't exactly meet the expectations you might have for when these two artists come together.
It's dark. Darker than you'd expect. It's driven by a furious drum fill, looped over and over, and a throbbing bass, while a sprinkling of spacey synths makes sure the desired filmic theme is not lost on the listener.
Legrand sings in her lower register, adding to the darkness. Space abounds in the arrangement, offering us an easy opportunity to put ourselves in the desolate, lonely environment she sings about. Again, beautifully resonant piano chords provide a sense of calm, before an obnoxious but impressive prog guitar solo makes us feel all anxious.
Listening to this song next to the classy ‘La Femme D'argent' is an interesting exercise. Here, it sounds like they're kinda playing with our emotions, whereas the focused opener to their debut album is very much setting a singular mood.
Air have evolved over the past two decades, but they're never changed too much. Who knows where their music will lead us in the future?
