Earlier this month, Air released a remix album of their 1998 debut album Moon Safari masterminded by British producer Joe Thornalley, better known as Vegyn. Titled Blue Moon Safari, the project reimagines the original record's space-age chillout with a contemporary twist.
In a video shared yesterday, Air's Nicolas Godin sat down with Thornalley and producer Nigel Godrich, who worked with Air on Talkie Walkie and Pocket Symphony, to discuss the project in a wide-ranging conversation that digs deep into Moon Safari's history.
Reflecting on the genesis of the project's loose and exploratory sound, which eschewed traditional pop structures in favour of amorphous instrumentals and vibe-driven soundscapes, Godin says that the absence of an established songwriting tradition in his home country gave Air the freedom to experiment with their arrangements.
"In France, we were not as good as England in terms of the pop music world," Godin says. "We didn't have this tradition of making pop songs. So as a French person, when we started making music, we didn't even try to write a song. All my English friends, when they try making music, they try to make a song, because that's ingrained in your culture and your history. All these masterpieces have been made in this country."
"When I hear a melody, it can be a melody for a song, or it could be anything - we have this freedom," Godin continues. "Sometimes there's a song, sometimes it's just a riff, sometimes it's an instrumental. We had no limitations in terms of form. We had no history, nobody before us did that."
It wasn't only Godin's Gallic origins that compelled him to sidestep conventional songwriting techniques, he says, but also his lack of vocal ability. “Thank God I was French and my voice was terrible, so I couldn’t write songs," he jokes. "Otherwise I would be like any other musician, I would take a guitar and I would write songs. But I was not able to do that, and it was not cool doing this as a French person."
While a number of Moon Safari's songs are purely instrumental and a handful feature vocal contributions from singer Beth Hirsch, Godin and Dunckel gave tracks such as Sexy Boy and Kelly Watch The Stars a futuristic edge by processing their vocals through a vocoder.
The duo have said that they made use of four different vocoders on Moon Safari, but refused to disclose their identity when we interviewed them back in 2000, telling us: "We can't tell you what they are, it's a secret... If you find one that we've got, you'll be able to make a record like Air."
