Le Voyage Dans La Lune

Air embark on another flight

The French duo Air were destined by their very name to abandon the earth from time to time and seek the inspiration in the skies or even higher in the outer space. The first long player by Nicolas Godin and jean-Benoit Dunkel was named Moon Safari. Released in 1998, this CD restored the audience’s interest in retro electronic music and was the first step made by the tandem on their way to establishing their own, rather peculiar, sounding. The musicians were very persistent in what they were doing and in the fifteen years of their hard creative labor, they advanced from unknown experimenters to the genre-makers who set standards and examples to follow. This is for the right reason that they were offered an opportunity to make a soundtrack to the classic work of the French and world’s cinematograph, a retro film, Le Voyage Dans La Lune dated of 1902. Of course, the restored video material required a new sound accompaniment to catch up with the contemporary tendencies. This was one of those offers one can not refuse, and Air completed the mission beautifully.

A crystal-like pure sample of Air

With the consideration of the surrealistic nature of the fifteen-minute mute motion picture Flight To The Moon, it was clear that Air knew the ropes of what they were supposed to do. Just like the film itself, the music by the French duo is based on the principle of creating a rich range of images, with rare usage of voices. In fact, the vocals are present only on Whom Am I Now, and Seven Stars. Yet the power of the new Air record is in that you can enjoy it without even knowing about the eponymous motion picture. This is a completely independent and substantial work of music, which, by the way, seems the purest sample of Air art. This is a record where the combination of Pink Floyd-ish psychedelic slant with downtempo electronic ambient reaches the most distinct outlines and maximum depth. The track list is only a half-hour long, and there is a meaning to each second of sound here as it bears a part of a big message. The duo skillfully controls your mood. The alarming Astronomic Club, the mysterious Retour Sur Terre and the lively Sonic Armada transfer you from one emotional state to another, preserving at that the feeling of easiness and flight.

The lasting effect of the short album

A short album as it is, Le Voyage Dans La Lune leaves its print on a listener’s mind for quite a while. It could be because, like no other effort by Air, this one is backed up by an embracing concept. As a soundtrack to a movie, it is held within very strict stylistic frames and marked by abrupt breaks in mood. Each would build his own word created by the music of Le Voyage Dans La Lune, and every one would have its own idea and sense, because a certain logic core runs through the entire track-list, too. Yet it would be unfair to the musicians to say that if it were not for the film, the album would lose its effect. Without adding anything basically new into their arsenal, Air, however, managed to reach a higher level. They managed to present their music views in from a more attractive perspective and make their approach even more recognizable and intriguing. The album Le Voyage Dans La Lune, no doubt, will draw even greater interest to the same-titled film and make listeners take a closer look at the great duo Air.