Air

What is it that makes Air so special? Whether you’ve come back from a night out or you’re at your girlfriend’s place, they’re there, crooning away in the French accents atop some abstract beat and laidback bass and keys. Since when did Air suddenly gain a monopoly on music to chill out to?

Don’t get me wrong, throw them on on a rainy day, sit down for a cigarette and there’s nothing better, but I just don’t see what’s so special, so incredible about this band that every second art-school dropout and struggling musician I meet has to go on and on about how amazing they are.

It was with a mixture of interest and low expectations then that I arrived at the Opera House to see the French duo try and change my mind, and, honestly, they absolutely have.

From the moment they took to the dreamy purple landscape of the Concert Hall stage, I was immediately captivated. The breadth of sound, the atmospheric lighting, the practised ease with which they played. Every bass flourish seemed effortless, the clarity of the sound was overwhelming and their stage presence, humble yet cheeky, was instantly charming.

Cherry Blossom Girl and Venus suddenly made me realise how many fantastic memories I had that were set to a soundtrack of Air. The breezy nostalgia of past romances and heart ache was made manifest live, what to me hade once been a charming song, was now near hypnotic in its power to evoke feeling.

Highschool Lover from the Virgin Suicides was another example of how Air are able to give their music such feeling in a live medium, how they engender each song with a sentiment or emotion so clearly.

Bass player Nicholas Godin, broke the bands silence by entreating us to a tad of his vocoder speech stylings before launching into Remember and again before Kelly Watch The Stars. The pensive melancholy of Talisman showed the crowd how moody Frenchmen can be when they want to, and the monstrous jam that followed demonstrated just how skilled a group of musicians they are. I had not expected to be treated to a full Pink Floyd-esque jam. The other members of the band, played their parts without flaw, especially the drummer, who made it clear that even though Air are best know for their laidback atmosphere, he wasn’t going to lie down.

Returning for their encore with Electric Performance, I couldn’t help but giggle to myself as Godin announced “weee are electrique per-form-ance, we are ze syncro-nizers” as his voice ran through some effects that left him sounding like a French version of HAL from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Sexy Boy followed, with the band making what I had always felt was a mediocre song shine in its own light. However, the highlight of the concert came at the end with the bands mammoth performance of La femme D’Argent. That infectious bass line, the loungey synth, the latin beat, all built up into a harmonious wall of noise before crashing back into a sense tingling hum as they bowed and left the stage to a standing ovation.

The bands amazing performance has left me a changed man. No longer do I dismiss their music and overly complicated elevator tunes. No longer do I criticise those who rant on and on and on about them. Air are indeed one of the best live acts touring today, and if you ever get the chance, cut off your own foot if you have to, the left, not the right.

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