Electronic music, to many in its soaring fan base, is synonymous with dancing. Not for Air, the duo which sees its suave, spacy songs as more appropriate for dreaming — or sex.
Two decades after emerging in France’s electronic underground scene, Air next month embarks on a rare US tour as the duo concedes that its time writing together is at a close.
Unlike helmet-clad contemporaries Daft Punk, a fellow French duo which has become a top force in pop and R&B, Air has gone more esoteric since its 1998 debut album “Moon Safari,” which produced the arthouse hit “Sexy Boy.”
“In a way it was really different, because we were making music not for dancing, but more for dreaming, and we were the only ones to do that,” Air’s Jean-Benoit Dunckel said.
And, he said, fans have long confided to him that Air is a top musical selection in the bedroom.
“A lot of people have said to us all around the world, ‘You know, you are the music to which I was inviting girls back home,'” Dunckel told AFP by telephone.
“The music is really helpful, when having a dinner and going back home with a girl. It really helps to feel warm and confident in yourself,” he said.
Dunckel laughs as he describes Air’s fan base: “artists and nerds” and “students and middle-class people who are working in science and research.”
In the United States, he said audiences were drawn by the atmospheric “European” sound as well as Air’s frequent work on director Sofia Coppola’s films including “The Virgin Suicides.”
Air last year released “Twentyears,” a collection of greatest hits along with remixes from the duo’s two decades.
But Dunckel is ill at ease with best-of sets, saying “Twentyears” will be Air’s only one. Both he and bandmate Nicolas Godin have focused in recent years on solo projects.
Dunckel, who likes to explore the connections between keyboards and video, said he has a solo album due in January. Godin in 2015 released an album that brings modern experimentation to Bach.
Dunckel, while saying he still had a chemistry with Godin as they perform “their children” on stage, doubted the two would return to the studio together anytime soon.
“I think being a band is like being a couple. You are together and constantly you do things together,” he said. “You break something and it’s gone.”
“Our production time is over, probably. We will see, but for now it’s like that,” he said.
Other than two West Coast festivals last year, Air’s tour is its first of the United States in seven years even as the duo frequently plays in Europe and Latin America.
Saying the duo felt more at home at eclectic venues, Air will open its tour on June 4 at the Governors Ball festival in New York with other concerts to include the historic Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
Despite Air’s French roots, the duo first found a major following in Britain at a time when Britpop was declining.
But within several years, Dunckel said the mass market shifted to hip-hop — a genre of which Dunckel is decidedly not a fan, other than versions mixed with electronic music.
“I can’t listen to hip-hop. Basically hip-hop music is a rhythm and a guy who talks on top, and I don’t like the talking,” he said.
“And I’m not into violence and guns. Maybe sex, but not that way,” he quipped of rappers’ favorite themes.
He attributed the music industry’s tilt toward hip-hop in the 2000s to the dominance of the United States, saying: “Music is a reflection of economic power.”
He voiced optimism about the rapid rise of streaming, saying it offered more leverage to artists who do not appeal to US tastes.
“The internet destroyed the economy of music,” he said. “But something else emerged after 2010 and I think it’s really interesting.”
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