Air play ‘Moon Safari’
LONDON COLISEUM
★★★★★
When Air released their 1998 debut Moon Safari, there was nothing else like it.
The French duo – Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin
– had conjured an electronic masterpiece full of refined retro-futuristic pop and gentle psychedelia that became essential listening across all sorts of disparate groups, from comedown ravers to the middle-class dinner party set via Radio 1 and film soundtracks.
But if the record was a unique achievement, it is similarly hard to think of anything quite like their spectacular recreation of the album on the UK debut of a belated 25th anniversary tour.
Ever the aesthetes, the staging was immaculate. In keeping with the album’s themes – nostalgia for the pair’s 70s childhood and the promised new space age that never materialised – Air, dressed all in white, performed from inside a white rectangular box, a sleek and sophisticated base from which tasteful lighting and otherworldly visuals could emerge. It often brought to mind Kraftwerk recreating 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The immersive setting enhanced the sense of wide-eyed wonder in the music. Air were joined by an impressively agile and powerful drummer and Moon Safari’s inventiveness came to the fore. Opener “La femme d’argent” began as a lounge track, unfurling leisurely above Godin’s typically precise yet loose bassline before Dunckel added layers of noise. By the end, it had become a swirling psychedelic onslaught.
The hits – a sumptuous “Sexy Boy” and giddy “Kelly Watch the Stars” – sounded invigorated. It was a reminder of how ahead of the curve Air were: at the time, vocoded vocals were still rare in popular music; Moon Safari pre-dated Cher’s “Believe” by nine months. That said, Godin used a vocoder to sing the luxurious ballad “You Make It Easy” (its original singer, Beth Hirsch, was absent), and it was the only moment that didn’t enhance the feeling of the record (the cut-up sampling of Hirsch’s voice for “All I Need” worked far better).
If past Air concerts were a bit too nonchalant for their own good, then with Sunday’s performance a sense of occasion brought out, if not quite showmanship, a certain personality that hasn’t always been evident.
Dunckel, stationed between two sets of keyboards, often faced the crowd and played both at the same time in an impressively offhand manner.
For his part Godin strayed around the stage as he swapped guitars, all smiles and lost-inthe-moment grooves. When an excited audience member shouted “We love you!” during the twinkling intro to “New Star in the Sky”, it could have killed the moment stone dead. Standing at his keyboards, Godin smiled and raised a fist in salute. After album closer “Le voyage de Pénélope” – a wavey, frantic finale – the pair could barely contain their joy at the standing ovation.
A wisely chosen second set plucked the highlights from the rest of their catalogue (notably nothing later than 2004).
But it’s the Moon Safari songs that will live long in the memory: an extraordinary performance of an extraordinary album.
Air perform ‘Moon Safari’ at the Royal Albert Hall on 30 and 31 May, then touring