Venue: Hala Tivoli, Ljubljana
Concert date: December 13, 2009
Attendance: 0
WE FELL TO EARTH:
The crowd got warmed up for a good half hour by a British electronic rock outfit from London, who never quite managed to get people on their feet. The hall at Tivoli only filled up a bit more around 9 p.m., when the two main men of this snow-dusted Monday night took the stage.
AIR:
With their fifth studio album Love 2 out since the start of October this year, Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, the pair behind the French electronic pop duo Air, hit the road. They kicked off the tour in Scandinavia, played the republics of the former Soviet Union, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, and finally landed in Ljubljana. It was the Parisians’ first time playing Slovenia, and it wrapped up this year’s leg of the tour, which picks up again on January 8 in France and then rolls on to more big venues across Europe and North America.
The new album was made at the Atlas studio in Paris and is the first record Jean-Benoît and Nicolas have produced entirely on their own. Drummer Joey Waronker, who played on it, was also very much present at Monday’s show. Judging by what we saw, it’s hard to call Air just a duo, since each of the guys has his own assistant at hand the whole time, helping tune their keyboards (Moog, Korg MS-20, Wurlitzer) after every song and keeping everything running smoothly.
Considering that Air have been making laid-back electronic music for almost 15 years, inspired among others by Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, nobody was expecting anything crushingly heavy on Monday. Instead, we could just surrender to a pleasant float and a journey through almost all of their albums, starting from Moon Safari from 1998. From that one, I have to mention “Kelly watch the stars”, which I personally love, and also the closing “Femme d’argent”, which was stretched out a lot live and where the hypnotic effect, in both sound and light, really came into its own. The concert opened with tracks from the new album.
The new Tropical disease got its Ljubljana premiere too, and we also heard Highschool lover, the song featured in the film Virgin Suicides, where Air first worked with director Sofia Coppola. You could say this kind of music works great as a sort of sonic backdrop, but it would be unfair to claim the French duo’s music is any better than so-called “elevator music”. I’d even argue that their songs, especially the purely instrumental ones, have the power to carry the listener into a special kind of trance, where everyone can make their own movie, leaving each person room for their own interpretation.
The two Frenchmen build on minimalism and create delicate, atmospheric music where the listener has to pay attention to every detail and nuance. Nicolas keeps swapping between bass and acoustic guitar and uses his vocoder, while both of them work all the rest of their stage gear in, smartly and effectively, and cleverly weave French into mostly English lyrics. There’s quite a bit of humor in some of the musical bits, and Jean’s gentle voice goes a long way toward the bright, cheerful feel of their sound. Even their name shows where their inspiration comes from: love, imagination and dreams (AIR: Amour, Imagination, Rêve). This is music that’s also perfect for intimate listening at home, for more reflective moments when you can let yourself drift into your imagination, dreams and, of course, love, in the peace and comfort of your own living room.
Photos: Barbara Milharčič
Setlist
1. Do the joy 2. So light is her footfall 3. Love 4. Remember 5. J’ai dormi 6. Venus 7. Tropical disease 8. Missing the light of day 9. People in the city 10. Radian 11. Cherry blossom girl 12. Be a bee 13. Highschool lover 14. How does it make you feel 15. Talisman 16. Alpha Beta Gaga 17. Kelly watch the stars Encore: 18. Heaven’s light 19. Sexy boy 20. La femme d’argent
Photo gallery
