the Air duo covers their first album “Moon Safari” during an event tour

Air, the emblematic French Touch duo, has launched a series of concerts during which they play in order their first album “Moon Safari”, carried by the hit “Sexy Boy”, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023.

“Deciding this tour triggered a lot of stress in me. If I had known that it would go so well, I would have somatized less beforehand,” confides Nicolas Godin, met alongside Jean-Benoît Dunckel by AFP in Paris. The pair of fifty-year-olds from the group Air recently gave the first concert of a world tour in Rouen, with new dates constantly added.

Air, trained in Versailles, is not necessarily a prophet in his country, but is closely watched by the Anglo-Saxon musical sphere. NMEa leading British publication, highlighted this first concert on its website. “There is this recognition in England. We were fed the records produced there and Moon Safari is in the general culture of the English, much more than in France”, dissects Nicolas Godin. Which also reminds us that Air’s first concert took place in the United States, in Seattle.

An album played in order for the first time

Anecdotes from past tours flow. Jean-Benoît Dunckel recounts this festival in Georgia, “with not too many resources, quite strange. The electricity came from a generator, it was a camping atmosphere, but with the organizers’ big Mercedes around”. “A very angry, imposing guy came on stage shouting that he had paid for this and fought with the security service,” he remembers. “Over there, you play, there’s no question of throwing a diva’s tantrum.”

Returning to the present, Jean-Benoît Dunckel enjoys a reunion with the public. “It’s very funny. There are always, inevitably, in front, the big fans in a trance and always this haggard-looking fan, who doesn’t react. It’s him who comes to see us at the end saying: ‘I loved’“, says the singer, laughing.

Jean-Benoît Dunckel also describes this “vertigo” to play the album for the first time Moon Safari in full and in order. The first three titles, including the hit Sexy Boy, were usually played as an encore. “It’s a little unsettling, but it went well,” breathes Nicolas Godin.

To complete the set: nine other titles from their repertoire, including High school lover, from the original soundtrack composed for the film Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola. Seventh art, it is also a question with the scenography, which recalls a cinema screen, the musicians of the duo Air appearing in “a box”, as described by Nicolas Godin. “It fits the live performance well, it makes us smaller and bigger at the same time, it’s unreal,” underlines his companion.

A unique album

Nicolas Godin evokes a device “kubrickian” with lights referring to 2001 A Space Odyssey, “one of our favorite films, with this slowness and weightlessness which best suits our universe”. The duo is dressed in white, the color of thugs from Clockwork Orange, another Stanley Kubrick classic. “Osmosis with the public” felt by Jean-Benoît Dunckel is undoubtedly due to the unique character of Moon Safari. Because Air then took different directions and no one managed to duplicate the atmosphere of this record.

“It’s a soft, childish, deep album, with a zest of psychedelia. A dreamlike, mysterious, melancholic album”, rewinds Jean-Benoît Dunckel. Moon SafarHe is “hard to do again. It’s quite subtle, on a fairly narrow ridge line and, if you don’t have your long-distance trail guide, you can fall into the precipice of bad taste”, laughs Nicolas Godin.

Could a new album from the Air duo see the light of day after this tour? “One thing at a time. There is a lot of work and concentration for this tour. When we get back on track, we will see, by feeling”, concludes Nicolas Godin.