It’s difficult to observe the changing face of music over the last decade, and the growing popularisation of electronic music in the mainstream, without giving a firm tip of the hat in the direction of French duo, Air.
They’ve managed to keep things simple and clean, whilst continuing to push the boundaries while staying true to their ideals.
“When we make music it’s just because we’re very true to ourselves,” explains Nicholas Godin. “We don’t really compromise and I noticed that our private life is the same, like we never hesitate to start an adventure if we feel love. We can turn the page very fast and we’re not scared of the future. We don’t try to be safe or be comfortable. And love is the engine of everything we do. And it can be by choosing the job that we’re doing, making records, or it can be the person with whom we live day after day. We always go for it, we follow our passion. We’re not reasonable. We don’t think with our brain, we think with our hearts.”
Love 2 is the band’s ninth studio album. It may seem like a strange title from a band that doesn’t have a preceding chapter in the Love collection, however as Jean-Benoît explains, this comes more from their fascination of the fact that love as a feeling can be recreated again and again if you leave your mind and heart open to the experience.
“I think the idea behind it is the fact that there is no attachment really in life, because everything new is possible. Also love, because some people say you have just one love in life, or people that believe in destiny, saying “oh this is my sister soul and there’s only one on earth”. I like idea that something like love can be totally recreated, and can happen many times.”
Love 2 is sublime studio snapshot of the band today; it’s the album we’ve been waiting for. “It’s the first time we did an up tempo album, we never did it before, so this is really strange for us. The last time we used a drummer on the whole album was on Virgin Suicides and we really liked that. So, with this one all the songs have been played with the drummer.”
After taking the big band path with 10,000HZ Legend and exploring the wonders of guest collaborations on their last record, Pocket Symphony, stripping things back to a simple core trio was a conscious choice to re-centre the band again.
“We’re best when we produce everything together,” continues Jean-Benoît. “Because when we’re together we have to find solutions about the songs and time after time we found solutions, and it gives something more original, something different, something not normal but which is really belonging to us. And also when we do a record, just Nico and me, we put in it all our emotions of life and so it becomes really emotional and that’s why in this album there’s a lot of love. Because our private life sometimes is really complicated, emotional, going from sadness to happiness, like everyone, and so we use that, really psychological and put a lot of our emotions into music so need to spend time, we need to lose evenings in studio and try things and get lost. No musicians can stand that, they don’t have time to wait all the time so that’s why I think the best emotional Air albums are the ones that we made together.”
“People [can] like it or not but for me Air is a way of life, just to space out and to be above the things and being in a sort of other dimension. Just to be Zen and to be okay and to be full of love.”
Love 2 is out now through EMI.
Check out the video for 'Sing Sang Sung' below:
LOVE AIR, Loving the development of "eletronic" music, though i have never understood why people contunie to call it "electronic music" This type of music can be broken down into spacific types...
House, Deep House, Hard house, Funk, Electro, Break Beat, Techno, Lounge, Progressive etc etc. No two are the same music. So the difference between Hard house and Funk - or the diffence between Electro and lounge is massive. Its like trying to put AC/DC and the Wiggles under the same banner.... just doesn't work like that. Anyway well done AIR on the new Cd.