Air

It's a full moon night, and it couldn't be any other way. We're celebrating the 25th anniversary of "Moon Safari", the album that launched the Air spaceship into musical hyperspace. While a few timid gusts of wind try to ease the hazy heat of one of the most scorching days of this Roman June, we arrive at a packed (if not sold-out) Cavea, waiting for the party, which can only be yet another alien lounge-party courtesy of the celebrated Godin-Dunckel firm. The stage immediately catches the eye, transformed into a rectangular block that will light up and change colors, acting as a screen for projections: a sort of "magic cube" able to turn into a spaceship or a time machine, depending on the various moods of our lunar safari.

Hallo, Spaceboys: at 9:15 pm Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, dressed entirely in white, take the stage, preceded by drummer Louis Delorme. After the customary little ovation, the full performance of the 1998 masterpiece gets underway. The hazy (but subtly psychedelic) atmosphere of the opener "La Femme d'Argent" serves as a prologue to the explosion of "Sexy Boy", which sets the Cavea ablaze with its crackling beats, as does the other hit "Kelly Watch The Stars", which in a dazzling whirl of keyboards and vocoder brings to mind old-school video games and the most famous ping-pong match in TV music history.

The two cosmic couriers from Versailles don't bat an eyelid: elegant and measured, they simply say they're "happy to play here in Rome", and press on swiftly with the full performance of "Moon Safari", which will take up about 50 minutes of the set.

If "Talisman" and "Remember" pour out all their magical seventies essence steeped in alien lounge and vocoder-sung chants, the pair immortalized on record by Beth Hirsch's sensual voice ("All I Need", "You Make It Easy") undoubtedly loses something in her absence, replaced in the first case by the echo of her sampled voice over new synth parts, and in the second by a questionable vocoder courtesy of Godin, which undermines the languid warmth of the original. Still, the extraordinary beauty of these retro-futurist electronic scores remains, continuing to enchant even 25 years on, even when their orchestral grandeur is stripped down for the live version, as in the case of a "Le Voyage de Pénélope" in which Dunckel's piano replaces the Moog of the studio version.

Up to this point it would be a diligent live rendition of an album whose magic is virtually impossible to recreate on stage. Skillfully carried off, but also with a touch of coldness. Except that Air are keen to reassert their nature as Electronic Performers, having rediscovered, what's more, the desire to play together, after albums that - let's be honest - were hardly memorable, like the recent "Love 2" and "Le Voyage dans la Lune", which not coincidentally gave way over the last 10 years to their solo projects and scattered collaborations. And so, when they come back on stage for an unexpectedly long best-of section, Dunckel and Godin take no prisoners. With a lavish - and at times also jagged - celebration of their "total" electronic sound. Here then is the hazy charm of "Radian", with its ethereal synthesized harps, straight from the frequencies of "10.000 Hz Legend" (2001), from which the Floydian psychedelia of "Don't Be Light" will also be dredged up. Then, the triplet from the underrated (even by yours truly, at the time) "Talkie Walkie", produced by Nigel Godrich, with the enchanted "Venus", wrapped in a carpet of synths and surrounded by piano, claps and a soft little keyboard line, with the irresistible single "Cherry Blossom Girl", a dream-pop candy that keeps relentlessly sticking to you, thanks to that yé-yé refrain amid dreamy guitar arpeggios, cognac-soaked keyboards and mawkish Stereolab-style backing vocals, and with the liquid vibrations of "Run" underpinning the vocal overlap, which quotes 10cc's historic "I'm Not In Love". It's impossible, though, to close without at least one foray into the magical Garden of the Virgin Suicides, provided by an impeccable, entirely instrumental "Highschool Lover".

In the double encore, finally, the rarefied calm of "Alone In Kyoto" - immortalized by Lost In Translation by Sofia Coppola - precedes the final apotheosis of "Electronic Performers", the epic manifesto-track that opens "10 000 Hz Legend": a proud statement of intent from the French duo, with its dizzying guitar arpeggios scratching over a solid rhythmic base.

After more than an hour and a half of the show, Dunckel and Godin take their bows looking satisfied: the audience grants them a long standing ovation that also sweeps up the beaming drummer. As the full moon peeks out over the Cavea's terraces, we remain immersed in the spell of this timeless electronic music, at once nostalgic and forward-looking. This wasn't just the celebration of a quarter century of "Moon Safari". It was confirmation that Air were and remain a galaxy unto themselves: to be preserved from any debris and meteorite that time may bring.

(Photos by Claudio Fabretti and Pasqualini-MUSA/ Auditorium)

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