06-02-2012, 13:23
online listen
not my thing but it may be yours
a complete flatliner for me
vocals on only 2 tracks
nice music to sleep by
1.0 from me and a converted 2.4 from the pros at allmusic
from the album - Seven Stars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA_MqOVKYr0
released Feb 7th, 2012
![[Image: r56768f8t4x.jpg]](http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drr500/r567/r56768f8t4x.jpg)
Bio - from allmusic
More apt to cite stately rock paragons Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson as their inspirations than Derrick May or
Aphex Twin, the French duo Air gained inclusion into the late-'90s electronica surge due chiefly to the labels
their recordings appeared on, not the actual music they produced. Their sound, a variant of the classic disco sound
coaxed into a relaxing Prozac vision of the late '70s, looked back to a variety of phenomena from the period --
synthesizer maestros Tomita, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Vangelis, new wave music of the non-spiky variety, and obscure
Italian film soundtracks. Despite gaining quick entrance into the dance community (through releases for Source and
Mo' Wax), Air's 1998 debut album, Moon Safari, charted a light -- well, airy -- course along soundscapes composed
with melody lines by Moog and Rhodes, not Roland and Yamaha. The presence of several female vocalists, an equipment
list whose number of pieces stretched into the dozens, and a Baroque tuba solo on one track -- all of this
conspired to make Air more of a happening in the living room than the dancefloor.
Though Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel both grew up in Versailles, the two didn't meet until they began
studying at the same college. Dunckel, who had studied at the Conservatoire in Paris, played in an alternative band
named Orange. One of Dunckel's bandmates, Alex Gopher, introduced Godin into the lineup. While Gopher himself
departed (later to record for the Solid label), Dunckel and Godin continued on, becoming Air by 1995. During 1996-
1997, the duo released singles on Britain's Mo' Wax ("Modular") and the domestic Source label ("Casanova 70," "Le
Soleil Est Prés de Moi"). Though Air often evinced the same '60s Continental charm as Dimitri from Paris -- due no
doubt to the influence of Serge Gainsbourg -- the duo had little in common musically with other acts (Daft Punk) in
the wave of French electronica lapping at the shores of Britain and America during 1997. That same year, Air
remixed Depeche Mode and Neneh Cherry and joined French musique concrète popster Jean-Jacques Perrey for a track on
the Source compilation Sourcelab, Vol. 3.
Signed to Virgin, Air released their debut album, Moon Safari, in early 1998. The singles "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly
Watch the Stars" became moderate hits in Britain and earned airplay on MTV. Later that year, Godin and Dunckel
mounted an ambitious tour throughout Europe and America, though they had originally decided to forego live
appearances. Their early singles were collected in 1999 under the title Premiers Symptomes; the duo's soundtrack to
the Sofia Coppola film The Virgin Suicides followed in early 2000. Air's second studio effort, 10,000 Hz Legend,
appeared in spring 2001 with a subsequent tour of the U.S., but critics and fans alike didn't appreciate the
darker, more experimental direction. They bridged the gap between the pop of Moon Safari and the experimentalism of
10,000 Hz Legend with their 2004 release Talkie Walkie.
Along with touring in support of that album, the pair remained busy making music in 2005 and 2006: they
collaborated, along with Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, on Charlotte Gainsbourg's album
5:55, and Dunckel released a solo album as Darkel. Cocker and Hannon also appeared on Air's fourth album, Pocket
Symphony, which was released in early 2007. On one leg of the band's Pocket Symphony tour in 2008, the duo
performed with just longtime collaborator and drummer Joey Waronker as their backing band. They kept this lineup
for their next album, 2009's Love 2, which marked Air's first self-produced work and featured a more streamlined
sound than some of their previous music. Dunckel and Godin went in a very different direction for their next album,
which was based on an original score they created for the 1902 classic silent film Le Voyage Dans la Lune. The pair
created the score in less than a month, working with collaborators such as Au Revoir Simone and Beach House's
Victoria LeGrand, then expanded it into a full-length album that was released early in 2012.
Album Review - from allmusic
It's a neat trick that Air began their albums with a trip to the moon via Moon Safari and returned to it with Le
Voyage Dans La Lune, the expanded version of the duo's score to Georges Méliès' 1912 sci-fi classic. It's a perfect
project for Air; Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin's sound has always had a spacey quality, and film music has
been a vital component of their work. Le Voyage Dans La Lune presents an interesting challenge for Air in that most
of their other scores and soundtracks have been for films with more modern settings (even the '70s kitsch they
subverted and romanticized in their Virgin Suicides soundtrack). While Dunckel and Godin don't attempt to make this
music sound like it was recorded on wax cylinder, many of the cues have a stateliness that suggest a much earlier
time. Similarly, Air nod to the traditions of sci-fi scores while making them their own: "Who Am I Now?" borrows
the discordant strings often used to convey space madness, and the imposing timpani that runs through the entire
album evokes Strauss' "Thus Sprach Zarathustra," which was further immortalized by 2001: A Space Odyssey. And while
Le Voyage Dans La Lune is a silent film, allowing the duo to be a bit showier than they could be on a score for a
talkie, Air's choices feel more thoughtful and organic to the movie than, say, Giorgio Moroder's '80s score for
another silent science fiction classic, Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Godin and Dunckel make sure their voyage to the
moon evokes both meanings of the word "trip": there's a wonderful sense of movement throughout the score, of
rockets thrusting and of the explorers bouncing, tumbling, and stumbling on the moon; meanwhile, the fizzy,
percolating "Cosmic Trip," which mentions "enormous mushrooms," implies the more psychedelic undertones of this Art
Nouveau fantasy. As expected of Air, there's elegance to the whimsy, particularly on the lovely "Moon Fever" and
"Seven Stars," where Beach House's Victoria Legrand's voice sounds as deep and serene as an endless night sky.
However, Le Voyage Dans La Lune also has a surprisingly aggressive side, with bombastic prog rock outbursts like
"Parade" and "Sonic Armada," which mixes a martial beat with a groovy, insistent keyboard line and a bassline as
bouncy as marching on the moon to become one of Air's most memorable instrumentals in some time. These tracks hark
back to the duo's own 10,000 Hz Legend and reflect not only the conquering bent of the lunar explorers, but how
this turn-of-the-century trippiness ultimately inspired many of the progressive rock bands of the '60s and '70s.
That Air can pack so much history into this music without its feeling contrived is impressive, but it's just
another facet of the care that went into the entire Le Voyage Dans La Lune project. This is a treat not just for
Air fans, but aficionados of film music and science fiction, too.
Track Listing
1. Astronomic Club
2. Seven Stars
3. Retour Sur Terre
4. Parade
5. Moon Fever
6. Sonic Armada
7. Who Am I Now?
8. Decollage
9. Cosmic Strip
10. Homme Lune
11. Lava
not my thing but it may be yours
a complete flatliner for me
vocals on only 2 tracks
nice music to sleep by
1.0 from me and a converted 2.4 from the pros at allmusic
from the album - Seven Stars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA_MqOVKYr0
released Feb 7th, 2012
Bio - from allmusic
More apt to cite stately rock paragons Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson as their inspirations than Derrick May or
Aphex Twin, the French duo Air gained inclusion into the late-'90s electronica surge due chiefly to the labels
their recordings appeared on, not the actual music they produced. Their sound, a variant of the classic disco sound
coaxed into a relaxing Prozac vision of the late '70s, looked back to a variety of phenomena from the period --
synthesizer maestros Tomita, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Vangelis, new wave music of the non-spiky variety, and obscure
Italian film soundtracks. Despite gaining quick entrance into the dance community (through releases for Source and
Mo' Wax), Air's 1998 debut album, Moon Safari, charted a light -- well, airy -- course along soundscapes composed
with melody lines by Moog and Rhodes, not Roland and Yamaha. The presence of several female vocalists, an equipment
list whose number of pieces stretched into the dozens, and a Baroque tuba solo on one track -- all of this
conspired to make Air more of a happening in the living room than the dancefloor.
Though Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel both grew up in Versailles, the two didn't meet until they began
studying at the same college. Dunckel, who had studied at the Conservatoire in Paris, played in an alternative band
named Orange. One of Dunckel's bandmates, Alex Gopher, introduced Godin into the lineup. While Gopher himself
departed (later to record for the Solid label), Dunckel and Godin continued on, becoming Air by 1995. During 1996-
1997, the duo released singles on Britain's Mo' Wax ("Modular") and the domestic Source label ("Casanova 70," "Le
Soleil Est Prés de Moi"). Though Air often evinced the same '60s Continental charm as Dimitri from Paris -- due no
doubt to the influence of Serge Gainsbourg -- the duo had little in common musically with other acts (Daft Punk) in
the wave of French electronica lapping at the shores of Britain and America during 1997. That same year, Air
remixed Depeche Mode and Neneh Cherry and joined French musique concrète popster Jean-Jacques Perrey for a track on
the Source compilation Sourcelab, Vol. 3.
Signed to Virgin, Air released their debut album, Moon Safari, in early 1998. The singles "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly
Watch the Stars" became moderate hits in Britain and earned airplay on MTV. Later that year, Godin and Dunckel
mounted an ambitious tour throughout Europe and America, though they had originally decided to forego live
appearances. Their early singles were collected in 1999 under the title Premiers Symptomes; the duo's soundtrack to
the Sofia Coppola film The Virgin Suicides followed in early 2000. Air's second studio effort, 10,000 Hz Legend,
appeared in spring 2001 with a subsequent tour of the U.S., but critics and fans alike didn't appreciate the
darker, more experimental direction. They bridged the gap between the pop of Moon Safari and the experimentalism of
10,000 Hz Legend with their 2004 release Talkie Walkie.
Along with touring in support of that album, the pair remained busy making music in 2005 and 2006: they
collaborated, along with Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, on Charlotte Gainsbourg's album
5:55, and Dunckel released a solo album as Darkel. Cocker and Hannon also appeared on Air's fourth album, Pocket
Symphony, which was released in early 2007. On one leg of the band's Pocket Symphony tour in 2008, the duo
performed with just longtime collaborator and drummer Joey Waronker as their backing band. They kept this lineup
for their next album, 2009's Love 2, which marked Air's first self-produced work and featured a more streamlined
sound than some of their previous music. Dunckel and Godin went in a very different direction for their next album,
which was based on an original score they created for the 1902 classic silent film Le Voyage Dans la Lune. The pair
created the score in less than a month, working with collaborators such as Au Revoir Simone and Beach House's
Victoria LeGrand, then expanded it into a full-length album that was released early in 2012.
Album Review - from allmusic
It's a neat trick that Air began their albums with a trip to the moon via Moon Safari and returned to it with Le
Voyage Dans La Lune, the expanded version of the duo's score to Georges Méliès' 1912 sci-fi classic. It's a perfect
project for Air; Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin's sound has always had a spacey quality, and film music has
been a vital component of their work. Le Voyage Dans La Lune presents an interesting challenge for Air in that most
of their other scores and soundtracks have been for films with more modern settings (even the '70s kitsch they
subverted and romanticized in their Virgin Suicides soundtrack). While Dunckel and Godin don't attempt to make this
music sound like it was recorded on wax cylinder, many of the cues have a stateliness that suggest a much earlier
time. Similarly, Air nod to the traditions of sci-fi scores while making them their own: "Who Am I Now?" borrows
the discordant strings often used to convey space madness, and the imposing timpani that runs through the entire
album evokes Strauss' "Thus Sprach Zarathustra," which was further immortalized by 2001: A Space Odyssey. And while
Le Voyage Dans La Lune is a silent film, allowing the duo to be a bit showier than they could be on a score for a
talkie, Air's choices feel more thoughtful and organic to the movie than, say, Giorgio Moroder's '80s score for
another silent science fiction classic, Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Godin and Dunckel make sure their voyage to the
moon evokes both meanings of the word "trip": there's a wonderful sense of movement throughout the score, of
rockets thrusting and of the explorers bouncing, tumbling, and stumbling on the moon; meanwhile, the fizzy,
percolating "Cosmic Trip," which mentions "enormous mushrooms," implies the more psychedelic undertones of this Art
Nouveau fantasy. As expected of Air, there's elegance to the whimsy, particularly on the lovely "Moon Fever" and
"Seven Stars," where Beach House's Victoria Legrand's voice sounds as deep and serene as an endless night sky.
However, Le Voyage Dans La Lune also has a surprisingly aggressive side, with bombastic prog rock outbursts like
"Parade" and "Sonic Armada," which mixes a martial beat with a groovy, insistent keyboard line and a bassline as
bouncy as marching on the moon to become one of Air's most memorable instrumentals in some time. These tracks hark
back to the duo's own 10,000 Hz Legend and reflect not only the conquering bent of the lunar explorers, but how
this turn-of-the-century trippiness ultimately inspired many of the progressive rock bands of the '60s and '70s.
That Air can pack so much history into this music without its feeling contrived is impressive, but it's just
another facet of the care that went into the entire Le Voyage Dans La Lune project. This is a treat not just for
Air fans, but aficionados of film music and science fiction, too.
Track Listing
1. Astronomic Club
2. Seven Stars
3. Retour Sur Terre
4. Parade
5. Moon Fever
6. Sonic Armada
7. Who Am I Now?
8. Decollage
9. Cosmic Strip
10. Homme Lune
11. Lava
