Air - Moon Safari (1998/2023) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

'Moon Safari' is the debut studio album by the French duo Air, released in 1998. The album is a superlatively happy collection of experimental disco-mood sound nestled between ambient soundscape and breathy pop. Jean-Benoit Dunkel and Nicholas Godin, the French duo that makes up Air created a sonic masterpiece that captured a style and atmosphere there transcends time and place. Includes the seminal single 'Sexy Boy'.

“Don’t write AIR’s 1998 debut Moon Safari off as easy-listening. It might go down like a third martini, and you wouldn’t be wrong to put a song like ‘Sexy Boy’ on a sex playlist. In its rambling Rhodes piano riffs and flickers of smooth bass, Moon Safari contains a universe. It is a beginning: The story of two young people finally making the art they knew they were capable of making, the story of using what you have to create what can best be described as a mood. A sensation, a prick on the back of your neck, a spit exchange with a stranger in a smoky bar.

Moon Safari, though, will always be a perfect debut. It feels like a dream sequence. One moment you’re walking through a room drenched in pink light while dressed in a tuxedo, the next you’re diving into the neighbor’s pool butt-naked with your high school crush. It’s a mood you want to live inside of forever. It’s a revelation. It’s conversation pit music for a better future.”

"Although electronica had its fair share of chillout classics prior to the debut of Air, the lion's share were either stark techno (Warp) or sample-laden trip-hop (Mo' Wax). But while Air had certainly bought records and gear based on the artists that had influenced them, they didn't just regurgitate (or sample) them; they learned from them, digesting their lessons in a way that gave them new paths to follow. They were musicians in a producer's world, and while no one could ever accuse their music of being danceable, it delivered the emotional power of great dance music even while pushing the barriers of what "electronica" could or should sound like. (Never again would Saint Etienne be the only band of a certain age to reveal their fondness for Burt Bacharach.)

The Modulor EP had displayed astonishing powers of mood and texture, but it was Air's full-length debut, Moon Safari, that proved they could also write accessible pop songs like "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch the Stars." But it wasn't all pop. The opener, "La Femme d'Argent," was an otherworldly beginning, with a slinky bassline evoking Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson and a slow glide through seven minutes of growing bliss (plus a wonderful keyboard solo). The vocoderized "Remember" relaunched a wave of robot pop that hadn't been heard in almost 20 years, and the solos for harmonica and French horn on "Ce Matin La" made the Bacharach comparisons direct.

Unlike most electronica producers, Air had musical ideas that stretched beyond samplers or keyboards, and Moon Safari found those ideas wrapped up in music that was engaging, warm, and irresistible."

Tracklist:
01. La femme d'argent
02. Sexy Boy
03. All I Need (feat. Beth Hirsch)
04. Kelly Watch the Stars
05. Talisman
06. Remember
07. You Make It Easy
08. Ce matin-là (From "L'uomo in più")
09. New Star in the Sky
10. Le voyage de Pénélope


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