Skip to main content

Air

9

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
 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cake

43 Cake Cake What you need is some CAKE. The late 90's were primed for CAKE. When the emotional hangover of the grunge scene was too much, we got CAKE. This isn't a gag joke. In fact- your gag reflexes are in need of some CAKE.  Despite CAKE's quirky surface, singer John McCrea's deadpan delivery and Vince Di Fiore's mariachi trumpet playing, CAKE is as real as it gets. And with more than 25 years as a band and still going strong, they have nothing left to prove. It all started with 1994's Motorcade for Generosity with the single " Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle " which mocked trust-fund rebels. Then came 1996's Fashion Nugget with the all-time classic " The Distance ." 1998 gave us Prolonging the Magic, a high-water mark. I got on board in 2001 with Comfort Eagle . I was big on disco at the time and their cover of " I Will Survive " caught my attention, and then I saw the " Short Skirt, Long Jacket " video o...

Grouper

 131 Grouper  Grouper Reverb. Echo. Effects. Acoustic. Droney. These are some words you could use to explain Grouper's earlier work. Grouper is the solo project of Liz Harris. Her first album was self-titled & self-released. Grouper's second album was 2006's Way Their Crept . There was something special about that mid-ought's droney-underwater sounding indie. Grouper would go on to release five (!) more albums before I came on board as a fan: 2006's Wide , 2007's Cover The Windows & The Walls , 2008's widely acclaimed Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill & 2011's double-album (but separately released) AIA: Dream Loss & AIA: Alien Observer ... just to be followed up by 2012's double album: Violent Replacement Part I and Violent Replacement Part II . It wasn't until Grouper's more structured-releases that I became a full fledged fan. It was with 2013's The Man Who Died In His Boat that I finally jumped on board as a full-fled...

The Band

19 The Band The Band First known as the Hawks, the Band got their initial fame as Bob Dylan’s backing band. Remember when Bob Dylan sold out and went electric, angering fans so much that they called him “ Judas ”? Well, you can thank all of that to the Band. For a band that sounds so fucking American (seriously- no band has done the whole Americana roots music better than the Band) it’s pretty funny most of them were Canadian. After finally branching out on their own in 1968, the Band would release some of the best music ever recorded… and if you thought the Beatles had a hell of a run- check out the Band’s discography: 1968’s Music From Big Pink , 1969’s self-titled The Band , 1970’s Stage Fright , 1971’s Cahoots , 1972’s live-album Rock of Ages , 1973’s Moondog Matinee , 1975’s Northern Lights -Southern Cross , and 1977’s Islands. Lynard Skynard may have taken the crown for greatest southern rock band, but for a band full of Canadians and Americans, the Band really embraces a...