Air - 10 000 Hz Legend (2001)

1) Electronic Performers; 2) How Does It Make You Feel?; 3) Radio #1; 4) The Vagabond; 5) Radian; 6) Lucky & Unhappy; 7) Sex Born Poison; 8) People in the City; 9) Wonder Milky Bitch; 10) Don’t Be Light; 11) Caramel Prisoner

Rating: 8/10

A complete 180 degree turn to cold, mechanical electronica with only an approximation of humanity inside. But there's success in its surrealism.

Key tracks: "Electronic Performers", "How Does It Make You Feel?", "Don't Be Light".

Air somehow end up being classified as an electronic act from time and time again, presumably because they’re a producer duo who have a synthesizer and a drum machine in their studio. How this always ends up happening is a mystery to all: their sound is far more derived from 60s studio producer pop than anything synthesized and their mission statement has always been to create something warm, lush and alive even with the occasional electronic element. If electronic music is meant to be modern or futuristic, Air have always been decidedly retro in its stead.

What happens when Air actually do threaten to become an electronic act is incredibly fascinating, however.

10 000 Hz Legend was released a lengthy three years after the classic debut Moon Safari and a year after the style-affirming Virgin Suicides OST, and proceeded to confuse the heck out of everyone expecting more of the same. In place of the soft bass grooves, lush orchestrations and warm acoustics were instead stuttering electronic beats, inhumanly synthesized vocals and abruptly buzzing sounds. 10 000 hz Legend plays out like it was made by robots who after a cataclysmic humanity-erasing war dug through the ruins left behind, found traces of music and began to imitate the culture mankind left behind. It’s a decidedly alien album but one that uses familiar methods to break into uncanny valley. Its heartfelt love letters are uttered by computer text-to-voice programs, it tackles country and folk rock in a way reminiscent of someone who has only ever heard them being described about and its lyrics range from absurd to insane in a method that breaks through any language barrier excuses and heads straight into somewhere far out there.

Calling 10 000 Hz Legend an electronic album would be a half-truth because roughly half the album is dictated by guitars, drum kits and select band elements, but even when the musical elements are played by humans they do not sound any less synthetic, and that’s really the crux of the album’s point. The melodic, warm side of Air isn’t entirely gone – the second half of the smooth instrumental “Radian” could have come from Moon Safari with a little rejigging and the Beck-starring folk rock singalong “The Vagabond” is as live as they come – but even then the elements are played out like they’re just settings on a tracker. The albums takes things that sound like natural progression for the duo, turns them upside down and inside out and twists them and then presents them like nothing unusual ever happened. If Moon Safari sounded like a pleasant summer daydream, 10 000 Hz Legend is a fever dream in the far future.

Despite – or rather, because of it, 10 000 Hz Legend is an excellent album to dig into. It is, of course, absolutely nothing like Air: they never returned to this sound since and for all purposes 10 000 Hz Legendseems like a chapter no one really knows how to treat and therefore gets swept off. But in terms of its songs it’s a great album and in terms of atmosphere it’s impeccable. The whole album sounds like a strange trip to somewhere else far away where you can do nothing but observe, and the journey is laid out with songs that just get more curious with each passing track. From the relatively straightforward (almost satirically mechanic “Radio #1”, the haunting digital age love song “How Does It Make You Feel?”) to the off-beat (guitar-revving “Don’t Be Light”, the aforementioned “The Vagabond” which is the most normal thing in here, which in turns makes it the strangest) and the downright bizarre (the mental “Sex Born Poison”, the alien country ballad “Wonder Milky Bitch”), 10 000 Hz Legend stays interesting and strangely exciting. Its charms and strengths do not lie in the same direction where they do in most of Air’s output, but it creates its own new ones that prove to be just as bewitching. And on top of it all it features “Electronic Performers” – the opener that not only perfectly announces the album’s manifesto both lyrically and musically as the best openers do, but which is one of Air’s best compositions in general, dripping in atmosphere and featuring a hypnotic, enchanting melody that’s one of their most mind-consuming. 

It’s become Air’s weak point of sorts that they’re a very safe artist, someone with such a clear sound that you can easily know what to expect whenever there’s a new release. On their later releases it’s gotten to the point that it’s began to actually hamper them, shifting away from reliable quality to a vague feeling of having heard it all before, just better. 10 000 Hz Legend is a massive difference compared to anything else they’ve ever done and whilst it’s understandable that it’s not to everyone’s liking, it’s a sign that Air can actually do something else than pretty, lush pieces to float to. Perhaps the oversaturation of the latter from the very same group has made me appreciate Legend more and more as time goes by. It’s very un-Airy and as much as I enjoy the typical sound of the band, Legend being such a massive difference makes it so captivating and memorable, and it’s proven to have as much longevity as the canon classic Moon Safari. And much like Moon Safari, it shows the duo’s skill and talent – just in a wholly different fashion.

Air - Moon Safari (1998)

1) La femme d'argent; 2) Sexy Boy; 3) Kelly Watch the Stars; 4) All I Need; 5) Talisman; 6) Remember; 7) You Make It Easy; 8) Ce matin la; 9) New Star in the Sky; 10) Le voyage de Penelope

Rating: 8/10

Late 90's space-age lounge chillout never sounded better.

Key songs: "La femme d'argent", "Sexy Boy", "Kelly Watch the Stars"

In a way, Air never surpassed Moon Safari. And yet, in another way this comes so frustratingly short of being a real proper classic that I'm still probably more eager to listen to some of their other albums over this on a given day. The reputation of Moon Safari doesn't seem to be as big or notable as it used to be either, but its list of merits is notable. It launched Air straight to the top upon its release, it spearheaded (even if didn’t start) the chill-out trend that cropped up around the millennial years and it's still the main reason why Air continue to have a relatively high profile despite their public presence having faded some time ago already. Which is unfortunate, because the album really does deserve accolades. 

For starters, if there's one thing in particular to note about Moon Safari is that it sounds wonderful. It's a cool and collected album, but the level of skill that Benoit and Dunckel display here is borderline boastfully arrogant. Not only are the general production and arrangements absolutely on point, but the ace in the hole is how the obvious retro throwback feel, hailing towards 60′s lounge and 70′s hi-fi studio wizardry, has been so well augmented with a modern flair that the album even now sounds fresh and in-date. While it arguably paved way for a lot of chill-out music and it sure is a laid back album, the overall tone is more about how cool it sounds - as if Air decided to take all the stereotypical notions of French cool and make it a real, tangible thing. Nothing exemplifies all this better than "La femme d'argent", arguably the album's signature song and its opener. It grooves with such smoothness that it slides off the speakers, painting a beautiful picture with its rich sonic palette as it ebbs and flows so effortlessly. 

From there, Moon Safari goes from strength to strength. "Kelly, Watch the Stars" frolics through the air like a dance anthem that decided to take it easy one day (although, admittedly, I do prefer the peppier single mix); "All I Need" is the musical definition of a blissful summer's day; "Talisman" adds a touch of drama with its cinematic orchestral sweeps, and "Sexy Boy"... "Sexy Boy" really makes a point about that notion of confidence brought before. It's a ludicrous song, and really makes no sense between the throbbing bass, the distorted guitar walls, dreamland verses and Godin's sensual falsetto whispering about idealistic manliness into your ear. And yet the duo fully embrace the ridiculousness, convert it into effortless cool and even daringly slam it right after the incredibly classy "La femme d'argent". It has nothing to do with the rest of the album and yet without it Moon Safari would be a lesser deal. 

But - and you knew there was going to be a 'but' - it's clear that the big signature moments were placed in front of the album and the latter half is more of a pleasant comedown from the initial heights. It still sounds lovely of course, and the pastoral "Ce matin la" and the stargazing bite-size pop nugget "Remember" are solid continuation from what came before. But then, as nice as "You Make It Easy" is it's still a reheated version of "All I Need" (same tricks, same singer, less impact) and as wistfully pretty as "New Star in the Sky" can get, it sways along a little too long for its own good without doing much for most of its duration. "Le voyage de Penelope" is so nondescript that after so, so many years of owning the album and literally having listened to it an hour before I started writing this paragraph, I still can't remember how it actually goes, which ends the album on a major flat note. Which is a shame because up until the last stretch of songs, Moon Safari was on a straight and clear path to the canon, and then it's just gone and muddled things up for itself. It’s why I always remember Moon Safari being incredible, but never feel quite as overwhelmed by it whenever I reach the end of the disc.

That Moon Safari doesn't quite reach its high ambitions is a little surreal, given how out of the ordinary it sounds nearly every step of the way. Not a lot of albums have gone these roads since even when they've mined the same inspirations, including anything by Air themselves, and that's a lot to do with how Godin and Dunckel manage to keep everything so timeless, blending together the old and the new and gluing them together with the golden-eared production. It'd be perfectly fair to call this Air's most essential album because it feels like the perfected form of what the duo have aimed to strive for, with all the subsequent developments since sounding like sidetracks. What they created here is something thoroughly lovely - a perfect sunset evening soundtrack, a head-nodding groove, a carefully detailed daydream. At that stage, debating whether this really is a classic or not seems almost like splitting hairs: it’s a lush experience nonetheless.