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Walking on Air >> How two guys from Versailles became the year's best dream weavers. Electro-pop. Non-stop. by CHRIS YURKIW
Oh sure, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel had hopped across the Channel from Paris a few times to perform their hits "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch the Stars" on those British top-of-the-pops TV shows, one-off shots that were absolutely necessary to quell the frantic francophilia that's gripped even Fortress Britain. But this is different. This is a proper show to begin a modest 10-date tour. This is America. This is Seattle, for chrissake! Of course, Air are no dummies--although it's been said that their debut album Moon Safari is this year's Dummy, a left-field, neo-club album that's just as appealing to kids looking for a little pop in the dancefloor mechanik as it is to aging rockheads who get all mushy when they hear Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver." And even though the pair of 28-year-olds began making their lulling, '70s-styled synth-pop as an avowed studio band a few years ago, they've come to America in person--some 30 analog keyboards in tow--kind of like de Tocqueville: to figure out just what the hell's going on here. Actually, Jean-Benoît Dunckel already has a pretty good idea. "I think there is an audience for us in America," says the purported "shy one" of the duo. "In such big towns like L.A., New York and Chicago the record was pretty well selling, so it's very useful to go there and meet the people. And we are playing with some American people, and these musicians, they understand us--the keyboard conception and the crazy sound keyboards that we are doing on the record. "Yesterday we saw that there is a real audience for us. The people know the songs that we have composed! It was so exciting for me to see all the people shutting their eyes to listen to the music. It was very good. People were really excited. So many young people--girls, too. Very interesting." Girls? "You know," says J-B, "girls are very important for us. We are French." If there was ever any doubt that Air don't know exactly the effect--stereotypes included--of their Frenchness, of their mid-'70s easy-listening music, of their jokey visual style (see the hybrid VW bus/space shuttle on the back cover of Moon Safari), then let it end here. But know equally that the real beauty of Air's Muzaky Moog solos, their warmly fake Rhodes electric piano and oddly humanizing computer-vox vocoder, is that they are not ironic. This is womb music, for at least a couple of generations, and there's no room in the womb for any subsequent baggage you might pick up later in life, like irony. "OK, I see what you mean," says J-B, "Utérus! Like the new Massive Attack video. Yeah, maybe we want to recreate that kind of a swim into the mother liquid! We like that feeling that your body's floating. You know when you feel very relaxed--when you forget your body because you feel relaxed? You begin to feel your soul, and so you have the feeling that you are becoming to fly and to have a transition with space--and that's what we want to recreate in music." Air's live show, in turn, aspires to recreate that same sensation, with pre-show visuals provided by American artist, Beastie Boys cohort and Moon Safari art director Mike Mills. And when the duo take to the stage, they're accompanied by a bassist, a drummer and two other keyboardists--which makes for four people on 12 different synths. "The show is quite psychedelic," says J-B. "We wanted to do something very electro-pop and psychedelic. It's a technical nightmare, because we have too many keyboards, but we will reach to do it. Some tracks, like 'Sexy Boy,' are much more electro-pop than on the album. And we wanted to put some pictures in the mind of the people beside music. In fact, we want to make fly the people, to make people escape from their earth." Is that all there is, then, all we can hope for? Escape--whether it's back to the egg or out into space in a mothership? God knows I've come down on indie rockers for being stuck in extended childhood, for groping for lost innocence. Why does it feel less guilty of a pleasure coming from Air? "In fact, it doesn't mean we are depressive," say Jean-Benoît, "We are very glad to exist. But we try to build a parallel world--another imagination world--like any artist, in fact, like painters or modern-art people. In the music, love feelings are so important for us. Sometimes we try to translate the love feelings in some chords or in some melodies, and I hope that for the second album we will wish to do that more."
With April March at the Spectrum
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Last night, Air gave their first concert. Ever.