There’s a specific area of interest of subtle, loungy music that thrived from the late ’90s into the mid-2000s. It grew out of ELO’s regal rock and Serge Gainsbourg’s loucheness, taking over bits of U.Ok. trip-hop, midcentury exotica, the Largo scene’s orchestral thrives and Daft Punk’s talkboxes. I don’t fairly have a phrase for it — conversation-pit-core? — however a main textual content of it’s Air’s “Moon Safari.”
The French duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel launched “Moon Safari,” Air’s debut LP, to extensive acclaim in 1998. The band’s meticulously hazy synth pads paired superbly with ultra-minimal funk bass and loping tempos. “Moon Safari” set a brand new benchmark for upmarket French pop, with singles like “Attractive Boy” and “Kelly Watch the Stars” proving that they had chops for hooks as nicely. The band instantly adopted it with the rating for Sofia Coppola’s debut function, “The Virgin Suicides,” and people two albums locked in Air as the last word turn-of-the-century band for tasteful European melancholy.
On the Bowl on Sunday, the band revisited the entire of “Moon Safari” with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, capping off KCRW’s pageant season there. Since that album’s launch, Coppola’s daughter Romy grew sufficiently old to turn out to be an influencer herself, but “The Virgin Suicides” stays a mood-board favourite for Gen Z. Fellow vacationers like Bonobo, who opened the night time with a DJ set, have turn out to be area stars in their very own proper.
“Moon Safari” has held up splendidly by itself deserves. However as algorithms funnel audiences deeper into formless background listening, Sunday’s present was a reminder that chill may be compelling. Air’s intense focus gave these wispy songs a powerful spine too.
From the opener of “La Femme d’Argent,” lifted by Godin’s nimble basslines, the vibes had been, as they are saying, immaculate. Wearing all-white formalwear, the band took care to indicate how a lot compositional rigor went into this album’s laid-back feeling. The preparations highlighted the nuanced tones of every of Dunckel’s many synths, and the way the band’s Beatles-y chord adjustments might maintain your ears locked into essentially the most stark passages.
Additional credit score goes to Air’s inventive route and lighting designer, who locked the band inside an oblong elevated platform that seemed like performing inside a James Turrell sculpture. It’s a neat conceptual problem to visually enliven a famously blissed-out album like this onstage, and Air did it with beautiful panache on Sunday.
The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra often kicks again on exhibits like this, including some sizzle and association richness however functioning extra as one other band member. The orchestra’s horns perked up throughout “Ce Matin-là” and raised the dramatic temperature on nearer “Le Voyage de Pénélope,” however the entire set was an train in restraint as a way of constructing certain each good concept will get its shine. “Moon Safari” didn’t want a lot else, however what it bought was illuminating.
The again half of the set went into the band’s rating work for Coppola — “Highschool Lover” and “Alone in Kyoto,” from “The Virgin Suicides” and “Misplaced In Translation” respectively, stirred the wistful elder millennials among the many crowd, this author included. They adopted a Daft Punk-ish distance on “Digital Performers,” touting how “MIDI clocks ring in my thoughts … We want envelope filters to say how we really feel,” however they didn’t actually need that wink and nudge. Once they broke the spell of ethereal cuts like “Cherry Blossom Woman” for heavier, krautrock-driven numbers like “Don’t Be Gentle,” they proved that being roused from tasteful stoned pondering is as enjoyable as falling into it.
