RFI Musique - - Electro - Air have a Proustian moment

Air have a Proustian moment

Fifth album: Love 2

Paris

22/10/2009 -

French electro wizards Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin produced their new album Love 2 on their own, locked away in the state-of-the-art recording studio they recently built in Paris. Not having to work against the clock, the duo indulged their creative imagination to the max, experimenting with luminous synths and layered walls of sound. RFI Musique hooks up with Air in their new Parisian lair.

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RFI Musique: What motivated you to build your own studio?
Jean-Benoît Dunckel: Well, we needed a place to stock all the equipment we've accumulated over the years. But even more importantly we needed somewhere we could escape to as a sanctuary. We needed a place where we're protected from the rest of the world, where we're free to do whatever crazy artistic or musical thing we dream up next. The studio was specially designed by an acoustics guy to produce a nice fat sound. It was crucial for us to keep that texture to our work because that's become our trademark.

What was different about recording in your own place?
Nicolas Godin: Things were a lot more relaxed. We didn't have the same time constraints and that freed us from a certain amount of stress which leads to making hasty decisions you regret when you're working in a rented place. Everything about this album happened spontaneously and pretty quickly, too, and I think our music sounds fresher and more upbeat because of it. You might have thought that having more time in the studio would lead to an ultra-controlled, over-produced album, but just the opposite happened, in fact!

Jean-Benoît Dunckel: Love 2 is an album where we learnt to let go and there's more of a "live" edge to our sound than usual thanks to the drums which are very present throughout. A drummer came into the studio and recorded with us for a couple of days, but the rest is essentially Nicolas and me going off into these mad improvisations where a lot of the time neither of us can remember what triggered them off.

What's Love 2 about?
Nicolas Godin: I think the music on the new album is still very cinematic, but we didn't have any particular films in mind when we were working. I watched a lot of Bruce Lee movies while we were recording Love 2, so you can hear a few Lalo Schifrin influences. But we try and avoid outright references. We want people listening to our music to create their own films in their heads. That's why we have such trouble making music videos and why we've never projected images backstage during our shows. We don't want to spoil anyone's trip!

Why did you opt for a black-and-white portrait photo for the cover?
Nicolas Godin: The black and white thing fits in with our Proustian mood. We're having an "A la recherche du temps perdu" moment! The cover reflects the fact that we made this album the old way, spending a lot of time fussing over what order the tracks should go in which might seem a bit ridiculous in the MP3 age when everyone's gone into shuffle mode... The way we look in the photo is the way we look when we finally emerge from the studio. Inside we're like a couple of vampires gorging away on virgin flesh, but outside the studio we walk around wincing at the light of day and life gets a bit more complicated.

Where do Air stand on the current downloading debate?
Jean-Benoît Dunckel: Well, I think it's a bit odd wanting to bring charges against consumers now that they've got the technology at their disposal and been shown how downloading works! The system has evolved to a point where it's now possible to copy films and music files and that means that the ways of recording and distributing music have inevitably changed. Art is in a constant state of flux as the human race evolves. And personally I don't think people are going to want to stop at listening to MP3s with such a crappy sound!

Apart from your upcoming tour do you have any other projects on the go?
Nicolas Godin: Yes, we're hard at work on the soundtrack for Sam Garbarski's next film which is an adaptation of Quartier Lointain, a manga by the Japanese artist Jirô Taniguchi. That book was enormously influential for us and we know it off by heart, so we're having a lot of fun with it in the studio!