titel von air moon safari

Moon Safari

STREAM OR BUY:

Release Date

Recording date, recording location, discography timeline, allmusic review, user reviews, track listing, similar albums, moods and themes.

Moon Safari

Air’s instant breakthrough of a debut is effortlessly cool—a haze of vaporized vocals, warm synths, and stainless steel hi-fi sensibility. Without being as kitschy or (wink, wink) ironic as its spacey “Sexy Boy” single might lead you to believe, the album is an immaculate collection of suave Moog moves and future-disco downtempo. A defining achievement in the chill-out subgenre, it rightfully dominated compilation racks at the turn of the century on the strength of songs like “Kelly Watch the Stars” and “You Make It Easy.”

January 16, 1998 10 Songs, 43 minutes ℗ 1998 - Source/ Parlophone Music, une division de Parlophone Music France.

Other Versions

Music videos, video extras, more by air, featured on.

Apple Music

Apple Music Feel Good

Apple Music Pop

Apple Music Wellbeing

Apple Music Electronic

Apple Music Eating & Cooking

You Might Also Like

Massive Attack

Sébastien Tellier

Nightmares On Wax

Boards of Canada

Africa, Middle East, and India

• Côte d’Ivoire
• Congo, The Democratic Republic Of The
• Guinea-Bissau
• Niger (English)
• Congo, Republic of
• Saudi Arabia
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa
• Tanzania, United Republic Of
• Turkmenistan
• United Arab Emirates

Asia Pacific

• Indonesia (English)
• Lao People's Democratic Republic
• Malaysia (English)
• Micronesia, Federated States of
• New Zealand
• Papua New Guinea
• Philippines
• Solomon Islands
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• France (Français)
• Deutschland
• Luxembourg (English)
• Moldova, Republic Of
• North Macedonia
• Portugal (Português)
• Türkiye (English)
• United Kingdom

Latin America and the Caribbean

• Antigua and Barbuda
• Argentina (Español)
• Bolivia (Español)
• Virgin Islands, British
• Cayman Islands
• Chile (Español)
• Colombia (Español)
• Costa Rica (Español)
• República Dominicana
• Ecuador (Español)
• El Salvador (Español)
• Guatemala (Español)
• Honduras (Español)
• Nicaragua (Español)
• Paraguay (Español)
• St. Kitts and Nevis
• Saint Lucia
• St. Vincent and The Grenadines
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Turks and Caicos
• Uruguay (English)
• Venezuela (Español)

The United States and Canada

• Canada (English)
• Canada (Français)
• United States
• Estados Unidos (Español México)
• الولايات المتحدة
• États-Unis (Français France)
• Estados Unidos (Português Brasil)
• 美國 (繁體中文台灣)

• listening party
• existing artist
• See all results

No matching results

Try a different filter or a new search keyword.

Search all Bandcamp artists, tracks, and albums

• artists PRO view site
• edit profile
• subscription subscription
• view collection
• showLinkedBands(!showLinkedBands())" data-test="linked-accounts-header">

Moon Safari (25th Anniversary Edition)

Digital Album Streaming + Download

Buy digital album   €11.99 eur  or more, send as gift  , full digital discography.

Get all 29 Air releases available on Bandcamp and save 20% .

Buy Digital Discography   €135.97 EUR or more ( 20% OFF )

Share / embed.

Air Versailles, France

AIR are Nicolas Godin & JB Dunckel from Versailles, France

• airfrenchband.com
• threads.net

discography

contact / help

Contact Air

Streaming and Download help

Report this album or account

If you like Air, you may also like:

A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile

supported by 5 fans who also own “Moon Safari (25th Anniversary Edition)”

this was the best decision ever made. thanks for this album! doojoux

Laugh Track by The National

supported by 4 fans who also own “Moon Safari (25th Anniversary Edition)”

Like a lot of songs on this album... starts quiet and spatial and progressively gets loud, complex, and pulsing. Love it! Many sonic layers; another well-crafted album! chris_decareau

HEY WHAT by Low

Mimi was so unbelievably amazing. More is a perfect track in a flawless album. ollie gn

ARCADIAN by Symbion Project

The latest from Kasson Crooker's Symbion Project is an absorbing combination of moody electronics and plaintive, drifting vocals. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 31, 2016

Chances by Acopia

Written over the course of two years, “Chances” captures an array of life experiences in moving soft-focus pop songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 20, 2022

PGS 015.09 by Tammy Lakkis

featured on Bandcamp Radio Jul 28, 2020

Wall Of Eyes by The Smile

Optometrist Wet Dream mrdiamondhead

Bandcamp Daily    your guide to the world of Bandcamp

Ten Artists Keeping Trip-Hop’s Eclecticism Alive

From Night Bus to Worldwide with Hush Hush Records

PC Music’s Dizzying Future-Pop Catalogue Comes to Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

RJD2 joins the show to discuss his recent release, "Visions Out Of Limelight."

• terms of use
• switch to mobile view

The Story Behind Every Song On Air’s Moon Safari

Last year, Air’s landmark 1998 album Moon Safari turned 25 — and, very fittingly for a band who have never been quite in step with the order of time, Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin are just getting around to celebrating the occasion. In addition to the deluxe edition of Moon Safari out today, which features an extra disc of rarities, the pair — who have been largely defunct as a musical unit for a decade-plus — are currently in the middle of playing the album in full for a series of European tour dates, which are part of a larger outing that will stretch well into the fall and across North America. After plenty of solo projects and scoring excursions, it really does seem like Air are actually back, although for how long remains to be seen.

Of all the albums in Air’s varied catalog, it does make the most sense to revisit Moon Safari in such a fashion: Even though it’s barely representative of what followed in their careers, the record’s lush and uncannily pristine melding of multiple styles — record-collector lounge, soft-focus ’70s psychedelic rock, the optimistic glow of early electronic music, the wistful fromage of vintage TV and film themes — proved highly influential when it came to the wave of downtempo electronic music that followed in its wake. Amidst their French contemporaries, Air were simply different right from the beginning, even as their music so exuded the same Gallic je ne sais quoi that was noticeable amidst the work of acts like Etienne De Crecy and Daft Punk.

Stereogum caught up with Dunckel and Godin over Zoom to revisit the album’s track-by-track composition and legacy, as well as what might be in store for Air’s future.

1. “La femme d’argent”

JB DUNCKEL: This song is like an adventure. The music is like a loop of chords where we’re improvising and turning around. The track is a progression to a peak, to an orgasm. It’s a bit like an Andy Warhol painting, where you have the same motifs repeating all the time. It creates a feeling of absurdity. We wanted to have that in a loop that was constantly repeating — becoming psychedelic and orgasmic at the end.

Tell me about how sexuality and sensuality plays into your work with Nicolas, as well as your solo work.

DUNCKEL: There’s a little bit of erotism in all music. Music has basically been made for seduction since the beginning of humanity. The good thing about Moon Safari is that it’s an album where it helps if you’re around someone — to invite them to a restaurant or your home. It creates a nice, casual, comfortable atmosphere. It’s the sound of what I want to get, and what Air wants to get, which is something soft, comfortable, sensual, and a little bit erotic — but always with a sort of elegance. The music has to make you float in a sort of ether or parallel dimension to make you feel good. That’s why our music is softly psychedelic. You feel like you’re in a dream, or like you’re a bit high — not too much, but in a happy way. It’s a feeling that was in our mind when we were doing Moon Safari , and it’s a feeling that carries into my solo projects too. There’s a lot of atmosphere, but a lot of melancholia too. I think that melancholia is the most shared feeling on Earth. People are much more melancholic than they are happy in their lives. [ Laughs ] It’s a feeling that’s understood by all people.

When I think of instantly memorable album openers, this one is up there for me. What makes the perfect opening track for a record? Are there any opening tracks you’ve particularly revered?

DUNCKEL: I think about the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . The first track, it’s like an anthem — a declaration of what the album is about. You have the main theme at the beginning, and it comes back at the end. It gives it a concept album feeling, and “La femme d’argent” is a statement. It starts softly and brings you into a soft fire. It’s an invitation, and it says to the listeners, “Now we’re gonna trip hard and put you in another dream. We want to get high with you.”

2. “Sexy Boy”

NICOLAS GODIN: The funny thing about “Sexy Boy” is that it almost didn’t make it to the album. It’s not like the rest of the tracks — it has a verse and chorus. We didn’t know what to do with it, because we didn’t know how to include it inside the rest of the music, which is more mellow and atmospheric. This track is more upbeat. It didn’t sound like the rest of the album. At the end, it was the biggest track on the record, which is very strange.

In the years after Moon Safari came out, I felt like I was hearing “Sexy Boy” as a needle drop quite a bit. It was in 10 Things I Hate About You , too. As someone who’s very familiar with your music, it’s funny to hear it in that context. Tell me about the life this song took on, and what happens when your music gets folded into a different context.

DUNCKEL: We like when people use our music a lot, but we’re careful about context, because it can be a bit vulgar. In the past, we refused a lot of synchronizations because they were misunderstanding songs like “Sexy Boy.” “Sexy Boy” is a seduction song, and it’s about how heterosexual men can be happy to look at other men because they want to check they are dressed. It’s more about a fashion thing. “OK, we are men, and we want to look sexy for the girls, and anybody else.” It’s about this taboo idea that men can be erotic too. It’s not about homosexuality or heterosexuality — it’s about looking good. Men, too, like to be well-dressed. They like to be looked at, and to be paid attention to the way they look when it comes to the clothing that they wear. In 1998, it was taboo to speak about men’s sexuality. “Sexy Boy” is not a very male-attitude song, it’s a bit borderline, and it creates a strange feeling. We liked that. It was disturbing, and we like disturbed. [ Laughs ]

GODIN: Movies, TV shows, commercials — when I was young, I discovered a lot of music through that. I think it’s a good thing, in the end.

Mike Mills did the video for this song as well as the other songs on the album, and he also handled creative design for Moon Safari .

GODIN: The idea was to work with him on everything visual — album covers, single covers, videos, merchandising. I think a part of us was very attracted to the USA, and a part of him was very attracted to France and Europe. We met in the middle of the bridge, and it was the perfect combination. We were both magnets to each others’ culture. It was the right mixture.

3. “All I Need”

DUNCKEL: We did this song with Beth Hirsch. She’s American, and she had a very folk sound because she was used to playing acoustic guitar and singing. We liked that American attitude a lot, so when we met her we fused the track with her voice. That was perfect, because the song was really mellow. We wanted a conclusion at the end that was mellow and a little bit dark — melancholic. In the song, she talks about the planets and being behind the sun — the fact that you float around the planets — and we talked about that for Moon Safari a lot.

This song makes me think a lot about chillout.

That dark melancholia at the end of the song is what sets this song apart from a lot of chillout, in my opinion — but you can hear the roots of the subgenre, what other artists would eventually lift from, all over this one.

GODIN: After the success of Moon Safari , a lot of people put us in that box. At some point, we felt a little bit annoyed by that. We felt more like composers than musicians. So right after Moon Safari , we decided to get out of that box and change our production style into something with a darker energy. We did Virgin Suicides and 10 000 Hz Legend because we were getting eaten by the vibe of Moon Safari . It was taking over us. Moon Safari was just the mood we were in the late ’90s. There was that vibe in the air. We didn’t want to get stuck with that image or that type of music, so I thought, “This is too limiting for us. I don’t want to become a one-vibe band.”

Listening to those records, it’s very obvious that you are a group that wanted to do way more than just Moon Safari .

GODIN: Talkie Walkie , too. Each time people think we’re doing something…as a child, I would get very bored, very fast, while playing games. I wanted to change games all the time. I feel the same about making records.

4. “Kelly Watch The Stars”

DUNCKEL: Kelly is this character in Charlie’s Angels , and at the time we said she was the most beautiful girl in the world. So that’s why we sung about Kelly. There was always this idea for us to get high and float in space — to feel good — so that’s the message of “Kelly Watch The Stars.” Don’t lose your feeling, don’t forget who you are and what you want to achieve in your life. It sat well with the Moon Safari concept. It’s very simple. [ Laughs ]

JB, you’ve mentioned getting high several times in association with this record. I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people who listen to Air also like to do drugs. What role has drugs played in your lives?

GODIN: We did the typical drugs as teenagers, but when we were doing Moon Safari , we were doing less drugs. When we were going out at night or mixing the album, maybe, but during the conception — the big work sessions — we were clean. We like to get high naturally. [ Laughs ] We were the average suburban teenagers. Smoking pot and that’s it, like everybody else. Nothing less, nothing more.

DUNCKEL: We are so clean compared to the rest of the people we knew around that time. [ Laughs ]

5. “Talisman”

This song represents a big, sumptuous turn on the record.

GODIN: Yeah, it’s a pivot track — a turning point. It’s one of the fastest tracks we did, along with “Le voyage de Pénélope.” We were working on another track and we couldn’t get inspired, so we decided to change our minds and jam a little bit. This track was done in four hours. It was a little riff, and we gave it to David Whittaker, who did a beautiful arrangement. For some reason, the strings give something very luxurious and soundtrack-y — Hollywood-style, like the great soundtracks. It’s very abstract, it began with almost nothing and ended up with the most gorgeous track on the album.

DUNCKEL: We have an attraction to Black music in general, and we were really fascinated by Isaac Hayes at that time.

GODIN: Yeah.

DUNCKEL: We wanted to have something really groovy with some strings and keyboards in the background, so that’s why the track is like that.

So much of Moon Safari is fun to pick through when it comes to eras of time that the music recalls. Tell me about the function of nostalgia across your careers.

GODIN: This is our nostalgic album, really. It’s when we were dreamers in terms of the future. We had a dream of the future which became quite different when we were finishing Moon Safari . When we were children, we were thinking of something really amazing — like in the cartoons, or the science fiction movies. We were dreamers, and in 2000, nothing really happened. We wanted to go back to that time, which is the definition of retrofuturism. That’s what Moon Safari is. It’s pre-2001, pre-9/11. We were in a state of mind where we weren’t so pessimistic about the future.

Air - Moon Safari (DeLuxe Edition) [Blu-ray]

6. “remember”.

DUNCKEL: Like Nicolas said, “Remember” is written to the past, but it’s also about love — maybe girls that we would think of. Wouldn’t it be great to be with her? It’s melancholic, about the love that you lost, and your memories about that love. We did this track with Jean-Jacques Perrey, who we’d done musical sessions with — an old musician with the ’50s. He found the word “remember” to be fitting really well with vocoders, so we made that around it. I wanted to have something melancholic with strings and minor and major chords mixing together, so we gave that to the track at the end of the day.

GODIN: This track was made very fast as well.

Was that something that took place a lot across this record?

GODIN: Some tracks were done in a few hours, some took months. Sometimes you can write a great verse and you don’t find the chorus, and it can stay like that for a couple of months. Sometimes, you make a song that’s not great, and you work on it a long time to make it better. But the songs that are already great, you don’t work on them very long because they’re great. [ Laughs ] The paradox of this process is that you spend a lot of time on bad songs and not a lot of time on good songs, which can be very depressing in the end. [ Laughs ]

JB, you mentioned the vocoder on this track. I think about the vocoder a lot when it comes to the French pop music made by you guys and your contemporaries. Talk to me about the vocoder — the utility, the sounds you can produce. What makes it such a beautiful instrument to use?

GODIN: We used a talkbox for the verse and a vocoder for the chorus. One of our favorite bands is Kraftwerk, and we wanted to use vocoder in a way to be like them, but also different from them. I think we found a new sound of vocoder — angel-style. Kraftwerk was more into robot-style. We wanted something more ethereal, like paradise, and I think that’s a trademark of Moon Safari .

7. “You Make It Easy”

Tell me about this song in the context of collaborative work. What makes a good collaboration for you guys?

GODIN: In this era of music, collaboration was new — there was Massive Attack, the Chemical Brothers. It was a new way of making music. In the late ’90s, all these trip-hop bands were inviting guest vocalists. When we did Talkie Walkie , we said, “We should try to make a record with no guests at all.” We turned the page. The more we went through collaborative paths, we wanted to do that less, and Talkie Walkie was the first album we did with no guests like that.

DUNCKEL: This song is more like bossa nova. We made an instrumental, and we were thinking this song would be better with a singer. When we got Beth, it definitely sounded much better. There’s a little bit of a bend on the chorus, and we had some strings to make it even more full in the production. Because of this work with Beth, and the arrangements of the strings, the song was turned into something else, and we were very happy about it.

8. “Ce matin là”

GODIN: This is the most childish song for us. It’s a reference to an old French TV show we used to watch when we were children, Barbapapa . We tried to do a cover of the theme in our high school band. It was a tribute to all the children’s TV shows we used to watch in the ’70s. It’s a very personal song for children who grew up in the ’70s watching TV. The cool thing is that we did much of the track in a very small space, with a sampler, in an old home. When we did the strings with David Whittaker, we heard it and were like, “OK, that’s it.” We were patient, and we nailed exactly how we wanted it. It was a good ending.

Even without the personal context you two have, the song very clearly sounds like an imaginary theme of sorts. You’ve done plenty of score work across your careers too. What goes into that creatively? What makes a good theme, or a great score?

DUNCKEL: When there’s a main theme or big melody that takes you, and when you can sing or whistle it, there’s something nice or positive to that. We were listening to a lot of soundtracks around this time — we were passionate about Ennio Morricone. When we were small, the Westerns, the American movies with cowboys, were all over the TV, and we liked a lot of them in the ’70s. [ Laughs ] We looked at a lot of movies like that.

GODIN: We used to watch TV and then buy records. Soundtracks were stronger than rock and pop to me. Rock and pop I started to listen to as a teenager, but all my childhood was watching TV. In terms of scoring style, for me it’s very natural because it’s the music I grew up with. It’s the most simple music for me to do, really — without even thinking about it, with my eyes closed. The ’70s style is a very specific style of scoring — John Barry, Morricone, Henry Mancini, all these guys. When the melody was important. Nowadays, with TV shows, each time you watch them you get an indication of melody. It’s gone in movies, though. With Succession , you have a strong melody — but in the movies, there’s no more melodies. In the ’70s, once the movie was out of the cinemas, the only way to remind people of it was the melody. Now, everybody sees a movie only once and the melody isn’t that important.

9. “New Star In The Sky”

DUNCKEL: This track had a lot of production. It’s one of the tracks we worked most on. We had a different verse, and it was a very long process. At the beginning, it was more uptempo, and we slowed it down so much that it became a very slow song. It came from this idea that, when a baby is born, there’s a new star in the sky, because I had a child one year before Moon Safari . It’s a really deep song about being alive and getting born.

You mentioned the production on this song, and I personally have a headphones music association with this album. I’m excited to hear how this record sounds on this tour. Tell me about translating this really detailed, intricate music to a live setting, and what that experience is like while returning to this record right now.

GODIN: When we started playing this album live many years ago, we were in a different creative process. Each time we’d change the vibe of Moon Safari according to whatever new album we were working on. Now, we don’t record a new album during this tour, so after all these years we’re keeping Moon Safari as it is. We’re not rewriting it in a different direction, and I think that’s very good. For the first time, the audience gets to hear it live how it would sound on record. We are at peace with ourselves now. We accept the album as it is, and for what it isn’t. Maybe the reason we’re doing this now and we never did it before is because we didn’t have the distance from the record — we had the desire to change things. Now, we don’t have that desire. Moon Safari doesn’t belong to us anymore. It belongs to the audience, and to those who tripped on it at the time. I feel a lot of respect for the community around this record, and we should play it as faithfully as possible.

DUNCKEL: We put a lot of naïvete into this music. We were in between making something sophisticated and naïve. We were some sort of beginners, but we were playing music for a long time and knew a lot about music, so we made it simple and accessible. That’s why Moon Safari worked a lot. People could get it instantly.

10. “Le voyage de Pénélope”

GODIN: It was a way of saying goodbye to the recording process, which was very simple for this one. We did a jam session at night. We were cruising, and it was a way for us to say, “The job is done, let’s finish peacefully and relaxingly.” The way we did it was so simple. We just pressed record and everything came naturally. It was a nice moment — just two guys jamming on music. It’s the last song on the album because it’s the last song we did.

Nicolas, I read an interview with you last year where you expressed uncertainty regarding Air’s overall future. Do you think you guys are going to work on a new record after this?

DUNCKEL: We don’t know. We’re so busy with the tour. But it’s a huge step to come from nothing to doing this tour. We don’t know about the future, but it’s true that Air is alive again. We don’t know, it depends on true inspiration. Sometimes it’s about meeting other people or having new ideas, new concepts. We’re gonna see. It’s life.

Nicolas, anything to add?

GODIN: No. If we do make another album, it can’t be disappointing for the audience. It’s a lot of pressure.

Manuel Obadia-Wills

AIR PLAY MOON SAFARI NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES: 09/25 – Vancouver, BC @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre 09/27 – Seattle, WA @ Benaroya Hall 09/29 – Los Angeles, CA @ Orpheum 09/30 – Los Angeles, CA @ Orpheum 10/02 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic 10/04 – Denver, CO @ Bellco Theater 10/06 – Minneapolis, MN @ State Theatre 10/08 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theatre 10/10 – Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre 10/12 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall 10/13 – Montreal, QC @ Place Bell 10/15 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway 10/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met 10/18 – Washington DC @ The Anthem* 10/21 – New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre 10/24 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle 10/26 – Miami Beach, FL @ Fillmore Miami Beach 10/29 – Dallas, TX @ Music Hall at Fair Park 10/30 – Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheatre

The 25th anniversary edition of Moon Safari is out now. Get tickets for Air’s Moon Safari tour here .

Stereogum is an independent, reader-supported publication. Become a VIP Member to view this site without ads and get exclusive content.

tags in this article

• Nicolas Godin

MOST POPULAR

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Cancel Rest Of Summer Tour

FKA Twigs Seeks $10M From Shia LaBeouf In Abuse Lawsuit, Says He’s Improperly Seeking Her Private Records Ahead Of Trial

Billy Strings Blew Up Bluegrass To Stadium Status

Succumb To Our Email Product

The most important stories and least important memes, every Friday.

more from Footnotes

How Air’s ‘Moon Safari’ became an elegant masterpiece of '90s electronic music

Released in early 1998, Versailles duo Air’s debut album ‘Moon Safari’ was a gentle antidote to the wave of French Touch at the time. With an emphasis on melody and mood, it became a ubiquitous soundtrack to the end of the 20th century, and still sounds inspired today. Here, Ben Cardew explores its legacy

This feature was originally published by DJ Mag North America in 2019

So much electronic music is dominated by rhythm: the 4/4 stomp of techno; the woozy pulse of dubstep; the clattering breaks of jungle and drum and bass. However, some of the best electronic music — from Kraftwerk to Daft Punk, Masters at Work to Underground Resistance — is based on a wonderful understanding of melody, creating those hooks that stick in your head at the end of the night when the legs have been reduced to a mushy pulp. 

To this list we might add Air, the silkily nerdish duo from Versailles, who combine classical melodies with heady atmospherics, Serge Gainsbourg-esque élan and more than a hint of sex. Their music laid a framework for a generation of magenta-hued chill–out bands to idle out of the woodwork in their wake.

1998’s ‘Moon Safari’ was Air’s debut album, and, to date, their defining act. If you were young at the end of the 1990s and had anything more than a passing interest in electronic music you will have heard it, soundtracking dinner and after parties, school runs, chill-out rooms and 1,001 stodgy TV dramas. So ubiquitous did ‘Moon Safari’ become, in fact, and so many terrible bands did it inspire, that Air became almost persona non grata in the 2000s, their career hobbled by the intolerable omnipresence of their debut.

And yet, when you consider everything Air had against them, it was a minor miracle they even made their breakthrough. Air weren’t particularly fashionable, for a start. Even in the mid ’90s, when Parisian music was riding the sizzling wave of French Touch, band members Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel resembled more the architecture and maths students they had so recently been than the fashionable men around town their peers aspired to. 

“It was the late 1990s and Paris suddenly had this incredible electronic music scene: all these clubs were opening up. I didn’t get to go to all the parties, though, because I was generally at home with my wife taking care of Solal, our baby,” Dunckel told The Guardian in 2016. “We were poor. I knew our livelihood depended on Air being successful.”

Air dreamed to be different, both visually and sonically. There was nothing edgy or unconstrained about the band, no whiff of rebellion to get the heart strings pounding, and little in the way of beats to dance to. Most of all, as a stylistic decision, Air chose to be quiet: a gentle Gallic nuzzle to the ear rather than a voluptuous bear hug.

‘Sexy Boy’, the first single to be taken from ‘Moon Safari’, is typical of the duo’s individualistic approach to songwriting, marked by an androgynous, indistinct vocal. "If we’d sung ‘sexy girl’, it would have been a disaster. ‘Sexy Boy’ felt different,” Godin told The Guardian. “The song was about who we wanted to be; we weren’t handsome when we were younger; our friends always had more success with girls.”

So Air were big, unfashionable softies in a musical decade marked by innovation, ambition and noise. It would have been easy for Air to spanner together disco samples and filters to create a French House tune that would temporarily captivate the Parisian nightclubs. What Air did was to rely on melody and timbre to make their hugely elegant point. ‘Moon Safari’ was the epitome of this, the album’s 10 tracks forming a closed loop of such melodic brilliance and galactic ambience that listening to anything else afterwards felt like scraping muddy boots on a silk-lined boudoir. These are melodies that stick in the brain like glue, suspended in zero G by a velvety ambience of Fender Rhodes, clavinet, vocoder, strings and Moog.

Countless articles have been written about the recording of ‘Moon Safari’, and you can see why: the album pulled off the difficult task of sounding both futuristic and retro, its mixture of vocoders, synths and Serge Gainsbourg bass resembling a 1960’s vision of the gilded future, a combination best heard on the impossibly lush string and vocoder jam ‘Remember’.

Album opener ‘La Femme d’Argent’ is a wonderful example of Air’s insouciant melodic brilliance. The track also features stunning bass work, sporting the kind of bassline that carries the song on its back and leaves you singing in the shower.

Air were classically trained musicians who wore their hearts on their sleeves. The atmosphere of their music was balanced by the human emotion in their songwriting. ‘You Make It Easy’, a glittering highlight, spoke of the magic of falling in love, Beth Hirsch’s vocal soaked in emotion, while ‘New Star in the Sky (Chanson pour Solal)’ seemed to inject a whole galaxy of love and wonder into four tightly-packed lines with the ultra efficiency of a haiku.

And it was this, ultimately, that separated ‘Moon Safari’ from the music that came in its wake. Among the trends that the album inspired were an international Serge Gainsbourg revival, a renewed interest in film soundtracks, and the career of Sofia Coppola, with the band scoring her directorial debut The Virgin Suicides the year after ‘Moon Safari’s’ release. You can hear the album’s influence in the work of acts like Kid Loco, Bent, Röyksopp, Crustation, Tim “Love” Lee, Cibo Matto, Sébastian Tellier and more. But what few of these acts seemed to grasp, in their search for ever lusher melodic beds, was at the centre of Air’s artifice was a beating heart. Rather than the clatter of drums, this was the rhythm that ‘Moon Safari’ moved to.

Related Content

How The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Surrender’ became their biggest, brightest album

How Beastie Boys’ ‘Ill Communication’ set a benchmark for '90s eclecticism

How Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ became an enduring anthem of queer liberation

AIR ‘Moon Safari’ Royal Albert Hall show will be live streamed

History of the Minimoog explored in new book

Air share unreleased ‘Moon Safari’ demo track, announce North American tour

Air's Moon Safari is an era-defining French album worth celebrating, 25 years on

There's no telling how many special moments have been soundtracked by Moon Safari, the acclaimed 1998 debut album from French duo Air.

An era-defining record of pristine, space-age lounge music delivered with cinematic atmosphere and a distinctively French je ne se quios , Moon Safari was a universal critical and commercial success upon release.

The lush easy-listening music was perfectly suited to post-club comedowns, hip cafes, and make-out sessions: smooth and dreamy enough to be played in the background, but singular and masterfully crafted enough to reward close listening.

It proved highly influential, too. But the wave of mellow, down tempo imitators and 'chill out' CD compilations it spawned struggled to surpass Air's chic, exquisitely woozy beauty.

'It was not meant to be played live'

Jean-Benoît Dunckel, one half of Air alongside Nicolas Godin, never expected Moon Safari's enduring success.

"We never imagined this album could work that way worldwide," he tells Karen Leng on Double J Lunch. 

"It took time, it took decades, [but] the success is not by us, the audience made [it]."

This year, the duo has been playing Moon Safari in full around the world on their first tour in seven years, including Australia.

"It was not made to be played live," says Dunckel. 

"We had to adapt it for the live [setting]. That is what the people want to get — this special feeling they heard the first time… to live again these feelings."

Having played two nights at the Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid Live , Air will live-stream their show at London's Royal Albert Hall this weekend.

"It's a beautiful venue," says Dunckel, who is keen to preserve a pristine performance of the album online for future access.

"It's really important to do that because… people can also discover the band live. Some people appreciate the live versions more than the recorded versions."

Performing as a trio, alongside drummer Louis Delorme, Air play inside an oblong box adorned with dazzling lights and visuals, which morph from swathes of minimalist colour to the perspective of a spaceship enjoying interstellar travel.

"We play in a box of light. It looks a bit like the studio on the cover of 10 000 Hz Legend," says Dunckel, referencing the band's second studio album — a weirder, wilder reaction to Moon Safari.

"It could be a home, it could be our world, our head, our architectural concept. It helps for people to enter into a world… people like [that] intimacy."

Dunckel says people often ask: "Are you not bored to play these songs you play for 20 years now?"

"Sometimes I struggle — because you have to concentrate, and you have to play. But I'm never bored. It's always a pleasure."

Moon Safari is a product of its era, but it's also aged beautifully.

It's an evocative listening experience, from the moment lengthy opener 'La femme d'argent' ushers you in with the sounds of water and slinky bassline, through to the weightless pop and robot-voiced melodies of 'Kelly Watch The Stars' and 'New Star in the Sky'.

In 1998, its retro-futuristic arrangements already sounded timeless. 25 years later, its ability to transport your mind and imagination elsewhere hasn't dated one iota.

"It could be a journey, a love story," remarks Dunckel. "That's why we're really attached to it. I think the audience is searching for that, too.

"It helps human relationships in every way," adds Dunckel. Over the years, Air fans have shared "so many stories" of what the album means to them.

"Most of the time it's for love. It's always, 'I met my girlfriend or wife this time'."

Back in 1998, Dunckel told triple j that while hiking in Iceland, his guide revealed Moon Safari was his love-making soundtrack.

There's "probably" plenty of babies in the world with some of the album's DNA in them since, Dunckel estimates of a new generation discovering Air for the first time.

"As we are getting old now, it's becoming that people say, 'oh yeah, my parents were listening to Moon Safari when we were travelling in a car; this family time'."

Sexy Boy, the surprising queer anthem

For many, debut single 'Sexy Boy' was their first introduction to Air. A seductive slice of synth-pop that brought vocoder back to the pop charts and sung in both French and English.

It's a seemingly simple song but Dunckel notes there's "a lot of tolerance and freedom" embedded in it.

"Sexy Boy, first of all, is a strange title because it breaks a certain taboo. The taboo is that heterosexual boys can check out other boys," he explains.

"Also, it became a gay slogan in a way. A gay anthem."

The song took on a new meaning in late 90s Paris when the electronic music scene's wider acceptance of the LGTBQI+ community led to more club and techno nights dedicated to queer punters and DJs emerging.

"There was a lot of gay parties," says Dunckel. "Homosexuality is everywhere in the world, and it's always existed, always there. So, it was important to liberate this movement."

Originally, the song's titular phrase was inspired by Parisian fashion culture.

"People are checking each other out all the time… In Paris, when a couple is meeting another couple, the girl is not going to check out the boy. She's going to check out the other girl: analyse what she wears, how she behaves, what is the fashion or type of the boyfriend.

"Sexy Boy is speaking about that. The fact a man wants to be a pretty man and he is checking [out] other boys."

A popular soundtrack choice, featured in teen rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You and noughties TV drama Queer As Folk, 'Sexy Boy' is also a testament to youth.

The French verses are "celebrating that golden age of being young," Dunckel explains.

"When you're young you don't realise you're at the top of your life. You have a lot of power, actually… because you're beautiful. Your skin, hair, you feel great, you have a lot of energy."

The makings of a classic

Despite its iconic status, Moon Safari was actually the last roll of the dice for Dunckel and Godin.

Raised in the conservative suburb of Versailles, the pair began making music together after meeting at school. But after having their demo tapes rejected by every record label they approached, they quit music and instead focused on their studies.

Each had established careers — Godin in architecture, Dunckel in mathematics — when an opportunity presented itself in a close friend landing a role with Virgin Records imprint Source.

They landed a deal with the label but ditching their jobs for a full-time career in music to support their burgeoning families was a gamble.

"We were 26 years old. We were not sure we come be musicians for the rest of our life," remembers Dunckel. "I was already working [as] a physics teacher… I had a baby."

Thankfully, their risk was rewarded when their debut album became a breakout international hit. Air was swiftly lumped alongside a fresh wave of Parisian artists reinventing the electronic music scene in the late 90s.

Dubbed French touch, the movement included Cassius, St. Germain, Étienne de Crécy, and Daft Punk, who recorded their breakout 1997 album Homework down the street from where Air made Moon Safari.

"There was a kind of energy circulating all over Paris," recalls Dunckel. "Paris is kind of small; all the media, artists and business part of it [were] working all together."

The worlds of music, fashion, contemporary art, cinema — "everything was mixed," Dunckel says.

"At this time, new generations of young people coming from the suburbs are even inside Paris and mixing all these rich, futuristic concepts together with new machines, samplers, computer programs to make music."

A fond farewell to youth

Despite being poster boys for the future of French music, Moon Safari was an evocative, nostalgia-drenched ode to Dunckel and Godin's past.

"In a way it was the end of my youth… That's why the songs [on Moon Safari], there are a lot of regrets and it's a goodbye to our youth and the innocence of it.

"It's full of vibrations from teenage times."

Although labelled an electronic act, Air's music wasn't rooted in beats and house music. Instead, they armed themselves with analogue Moog and Korg synthesizers, vintage drum machines, vocoders and the trusty Rhodes piano.

The resulting compositions bore the esprit of Serge Gainsbourg, electronic pioneers like Jean-Michel Jarre, and the 1970s film and TV soundtracks of Dunckel's childhood.

There's a fondness for the psychedelic grandeur of Pink Floyd and ELO. But also, Burt Bacharach arrangements, particularly in the wistful French horn topline of ''Ce matin là' (This morning) and the easy-going 'You Make It Easy' and 'All I Need', both featuring the lyrics and vocals of Godin's then-neighbour, Beth Hirsch.

From its lush, otherworldly sounds right down to its title, Moon Safari gives rise to cosmic ideas and conducive to escapism. That spirit is central to Air's entire ethos.

"I think music exists in paradise and you can feel this [album] is in a strange interface between our world and something else."

Such ephemeral expressions might be surprising coming from a former physics teacher, but Dunckel says "both sides of your brain help" when it comes to making emotive art.

"There is a mathematic aspect of music, that analyses and helps you perform and conceive music. But there is something else happening, your heart is talking.

"As a musician you're organising the vibrations of your heart and the feelings into music… vibrations travelling into space and air."

"When I do a song, it's all about 'what do I feel?'" Dunckel concludes.

"For me, good means it affects me. No good means I don't feel anything… if it affects me, it's going to affect others, too. They're going to feel the feelings I do, too."

Air live-stream their performance at London's Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 1 June. Details here .

Hear Karen Leng hosting  Lunch on Double J from midday Monday to Thursday.

• X (formerly Twitter)

Related Stories

Vivid sydney will feature rare and exclusive performances from some 90s icons.

Moon Safari by Air

The masks, the music, the magic: remembering the genius of Daft Punk

Tame Impala was once too shy to meet Justice. Now they've collaborated on two songs together

For 25 years, it brought the world's best albums Down Under, but now this beloved label is closing down

How a huge personal loss brought Kings of Leon back together

• Arts, Culture and Entertainment
• Music (Arts and Entertainment)

• Meine Musik

Musikdownloads in Hoher Qualität

Moon Safari

• 24-bit FLAC
• 16-bit FLAC

Parlophone (France)

• 320kbps MP3 + 320kbps M4A 11,49 €
• 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC 14,99 €
• 24-bit/192kHz FLAC 16,99 €

Weitere Titel von Air

Ähnliche Musik

Wir - und unsere Partner - verwenden Cookies, um Ihnen unsere Dienste schneller und effizienter bereitzustellen. Durch die Nutzung unserer Website stimmen Sie der Verwendung von Cookies zu, wie in unserer Cookie-Richtlinie beschrieben

• Statistics Stats
• You are here:
• Tour Statistics
• Song Statistics Stats
• Tour Statistics Stats
• Other Statistics

All Setlists

• All setlist songs  ( 432 )

Years on tour

• 2024  ( 27 )
• 2017  ( 22 )
• 2016  ( 30 )
• 2010  ( 76 )
• 2009  ( 14 )
• 2008  ( 17 )
• 2007  ( 62 )
• 2006  ( 1 )
• 2005  ( 2 )
• 2004  ( 77 )
• 2002  ( 18 )
• 2001  ( 64 )
• 2000  ( 1 )
• 1998  ( 21 )

Show all tours

• 10 000 Hz Legend  ( 1 )
• 10 000hz Legend  ( 1 )
• 10,000 Hz Legend  ( 1 )
• Close Up Tour  ( 4 )
• Love 2  ( 14 )
• Love 2 American Tour  ( 5 )
• Love 2 Europe Tour  ( 4 )
• Love2 Europe Tour  ( 4 )
• Moon Safari  ( 28 )
• Pocket Symphony  ( 11 )
• Talkie Walkie Tour  ( 13 )
• The Virgin Suicides Tour  ( 1 )
• Avg Setlist
• Concert Map

Average setlist for tour: Moon Safari

Note: only considered 26 of 28 setlists (ignored empty and strikingly short setlists)

• La femme d'argent Play Video
• Sexy Boy Play Video
• All I Need Play Video
• Kelly Watch the Stars Play Video
• Talisman Play Video
• Remember Play Video
• You Make It Easy Play Video
• Ce matin‐là Play Video
• New Star in the Sky (Chanson pour Solal) Play Video
• Le voyage de Pénélope Play Video
• Radian Play Video
• Venus Play Video
• Cherry Blossom Girl Play Video
• Run Play Video
• Highschool Lover Play Video
• Surfing on a Rocket Play Video
• Don't Be Light Play Video
• Alone in Kyoto Play Video
• Electronic Performers Play Video

Show Openers

Main set closers, show closers, encores played.

This feature is not that experimental anymore. Nevertheless, please give feedback if the results don't make any sense to you.

• Jun 27, 2024
• Jun 26, 2024
• Jun 25, 2024
• Jun 24, 2024
• Jun 23, 2024
• Jun 22, 2024
• FAQ | Help | About
• Terms of Service
• Ad Choices | Privacy Policy
• Feature requests
• Songtexte.com

• Daily Deals
• Brand Outlet
• Help & Contact
• Watchlist Expand Watch List Loading... Sign in to see your user information
• Recently Viewed
• Bids/Offers
• Purchase History
• Saved Searches
• Saved Sellers
• Collection beta
• Notification
• Expand Cart Loading... Something went wrong. View cart for details.

Picture 1 of 4

Record air moon safari french original.

• 100% positive
• Seller's other items Seller's other items
• Contact seller
• Add to cart
• Add to watchlist

Oops! Looks like we're having trouble connecting to our server.

Refresh your browser window to try again.

Shop with confidence

Item specifics, item description from the seller, shipping and handling, sales tax for an item #196469352732, return policy, payment details, japan sunny market, detailed seller ratings, average for the last 12 months, popular categories from this store, seller feedback (43), more to explore :.

• French Original Cover Vinyl Records ,
• French Original Inner Sleeve Vinyl Records ,
• Dark Side of the Moon Vinyl Records ,
• Blue Moon Vinyl Records ,
• French Vinyl Records ,
• French EP Vinyl Records ,
• Blues Blue Moon Vinyl Records ,
• Chanson French Vinyl Records ,
• French Classical Vinyl Records ,
• French 1960s Vinyl Records