Seminal French electro pop duo Air (made up of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, pictured) have been pioneers in the electronic music genre for the past 15 years, bringing an organic feel to their atmospheric explorations and evolving without losing their inherent sense of style. Air’s sixth and latest full-length, Love 2, is a mesmerizing, retro-futuristic joyride in and out of different moods, from the ’70s sci-fi melodrama of “Tropical Disease” to the easy breezy psychedelia of "You Can Tell.” [Photo credit: Luciana Val and Franco Musso.]
I chatted with Godin a few weeks back about Love 2, the duo's new studio, Atlas Sound, and their live show, among other things. Check it out below.
Let’s talking about the making of Love 2. What were your inspirations, ideas, influences, etc., going into the songwriting process?
The idea was to do the most spontaneous album we’ve done in a long time, because sometimes we have concepts behind albums and it makes the process very heavy. Like, the last album we had this concept about Asia and you know, we used Japanese instruments and stuff like that. It’s a good idea to start, but after a while, you are a prisoner of a process, you know, so it’s not cool. So for this one, we just went into the studio and we recorded everything that was in our heads, very spontaneous. That was the main idea, the idea that there’s no idea.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2010.