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Air

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AIR

AIR


Since their humble beginnings on Premiers Symptomes, their 1997 debut E.P., French electropop duo Air have done everything in their means to bring a French flavor of spacey electronic pop into the mainstream… and based on recent hits like “thank u, next” and “bad guy” I’d say they have achieved their goal. Air’s debut, 1998’s Moon Safari, is a pop classic of instrumental-space-pop-retro-futurism. This French duo single-handedly helped downtempo move from the basements of ravers to more respects venues like Hôtel Costes. That “Chill-out Mix” you just download? Most likely has Air on it. What do you want? Feathery guitars? Piano solos? Ribbons of synthesizer? Deep reverb? Plush arrangements? Bongos!? Air has got it! Air like to let you know what kind of album you're in for with the first couple of bars of their opening tracks. Moon Safari faded up with bongos on "La Femme D'Argent", setting the stage for a loose and hep journey into space-age atmospherics. The "do-do-thWACK" S&M whip of the drum machine opening to "Electronic Performers", on the other hand, thrust us into the stiffer, shinier, more adventurous world of 10,000 Hz Legend, wherein Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel sounded as if they'd been inhaling some of Dean and Gene Ween's Scotchgard. Talkie Walkie broke the percussion-only trend by pairing its opening beat with a strummed acoustic guitar and a stately piano refrain, introducing their warmest, brightest, and most song-oriented album. Stomping piano and opiated gospel handclaps march on album highlight "Venus" set a brutal funereal pace through keyboards that break like dead, pale winter sunlight and falling ice. Tolling bells and crickets take the song into twilight. Somehow it's numbingly romantic. Atonal music boxes, Plutonian pings, and digital fugues created an album that evokes purgatorial drifting, running out of oxygen, and passing into the light after a Space Walk disaster. On Pocket Symphony, the opening message is equally clear: The fluttering percussion on "Space Maker", hovering all alone, sounds like it's bouncing off hard, cold surfaces. And since Air have always been pop songwriters more than any kind of "electronic" act, they manage to offer a terrific picture of the music that informs their own recordings. There is nothing I love more than sitting down and just putting on an album and getting a full experience. Dark Side… In Rainbows… Soft Bulletin… each of Air’s album is a journey and a sincere experience.to the album now is nothing but a sincere experience. This band can progress through prog and funk and connect it all so beautifully and to realize this is music created by a couple of music nerds with a knack for grand, symphonic statements make the music that much enjoyable. Air is what we need to stay alive, in our retro-futuristic dreams. Air consists of Jean-Bénoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin. do love their cheeses and their well-tailored suits, they're hardly stereotypical snobs. In person, the duo are reserved and shy while still retaining a sense of congenial warmth.
The pair (both entering their 50’s) have known each other for over 30 years, and they abide by a personal-- perhaps-unconscious—wavelength. And the wide variety of sounds they've embraced throughout their catalog-- from the slow-burn chillout of Moon Safari to 10,000 Hz Legend's weirdo space-rock to the faint teenage glow of The Virgin Suicides soundtrack to Pocket Symphony's rock-garden minimalism to all the rest suggest Air have done a lot of traveling in their days, sonically and otherwise. And when you travel as consistently and long as this band… you know the one thing you can’t live without is… that one thing...
Air
 


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