Where does the greatness of a musician reside? Music is like the first principle of dynamic physics: nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed. Having stated this just to dispel any kind of comment(s) that abound in this and other forums like: "Yes, but X got there first," or "No, it sounds like a clone of Y, who already hinted at these sounds back in 1823"...
All musicians are a bit of thieves, as they take inspiration from something that has already been done, they manipulate it, blend it, and voilà... serve it on a platter, perhaps 30 years later.
To understand Air... no, no, I was wrong... to catalog Air, one would first need to catalog that musical genre we’ve been calling "Lounge" or "Easy Listening" for too many years... Terms that have always made my skin crawl... Who is Lounge? What the hell is Lounge music? The one from the various compilations of the "Irma" label?? The music that a handful of Jingleari (that’s how they all started) like Piovani, Bacalov, Franco Godi, Papetti, etc., made in the Fab Sixties??
Or that Burt Bacharach who invented "elevator music," the background soundtrack of a thousand escapades of our fathers and even grandfathers?? Perhaps...
So where does the greatness of a musician reside? When listening to a work of theirs, one is overwhelmed by a thousand déjà-vus, but cannot quite place the object of our memories, which remains a ghost bestowing emotions... This is the greatness of a musician, the greatness of AIR... Listening to Moon Safari is like taking a dive into the past, like a "Mémoire Involontaire" Proustian that teases our memory, making us feel ancient, dormant sensations, yet unplaceable. Then there are the sounds, the modern arrangements that wake us from the dream and tell us: Hey idiot, we’re in the 2000s!! Yes... But it’s a muffled 2000, gentle like an ancient heartbeat that suddenly comes back to be felt, tender like the memory of a great love... lost in the mists of time.
This is Moon Safari, this is the music of Air.
Best regards.
