Air's music is often referred to as electronica their form of electronic
music was influenced by the synthesizer sounds of the 1970s
such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and Francis Lai. Other influences
are Pink Floyd, Krautrockers Tangerine Dream, Jean-Jacques
Perrey and Serge Gainsbourg.
Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin are modernists. Air embrace
the new. Each album is a move away from the last and a journey
towards something else. Their music is intellectually stimulating yet
intuitively simple, elegiac and triumphal, beyond pop and yet resolutely
of it, too.
Yet Air are no academically dry intellectuals either. If their music is
full of French-style clichés about boy meeting girl, it’s done so playfully,
with a knowing wink. They know their way round a good joke
and can deadpan for the Republic.
Pocket Symphony is their fourth studio album proper and the follow
up to 2004’s Talkie Walkie (although if you include their Allessandro
Baricco City Reading collaboration, the Virgin Suicides soundtrack
and their recent Charlotte Gainsbourg production 5:55 they could
claim seven). It’s also the fourth album they have done in conjunction
with English producer Nigel Godrich.
Pocket Symphony is, despite being a distinct step away from orthodox
pop modes, a return to some of pastoral atmospherics of their
now seminal debut album Moon Safari. Nicolas puts it thus: “This
album is different. We decided to go back to the soundtrack musicstyle,
with more instrumentals and less songs.”
Yet paradoxically it’s a far cry from the series of pop hits they
enjoyed in 1998, with clear notes of minimalism among the clingy
hooks and deceptively complex piano lines. “Increasingly, we are
trying to get away from the pop sound,” says Jean-Benoit. “I suppose
we are influenced by modern composers like Philip Glass or
even early 20th century classical composers like Ravel or Erik Satie.
The most obvious difference from previous recordings are the
Eastern influences: While conventional instruments continue to
play a great role, Air have fashioned several tracks from the new
album with the addition of Far East classical instruments which
Godin learnt to play from Shoko, a Japanese master - namely the
Koto (usually referred to as a Japanese floor harp) and the
Shamisen, a 3-stringed instrument which is one of Japan’s most
popular classical instruments & resembles the banjo.
Pocket Symphony is Air at their most sparse, the excess trimmed to
the bone as they seek to reach a simple purity in what they do.
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