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How has your tour been going so far, and do you consider Air live a good addition to what you
create in the studio?
Nicolas: "Yes, of course. The tour is going amazingly well. We did the US, Japan, Scandinavia,
Germany... I think the power of our cause goes straight to the people when we play live. We can't
hide it behind production. The beauty of the music appears much more live than on the album, it goes
straight to the people."
Would you say it's rockier?
Nicolas: "It can be rockier, but we try also to keep the electronic touch. We have a huge
electronic drum kit and a lot of analogue keyboards. Each one of us has got his own sampler, and we
have turntables. We have a lot of machines, but it's still rocky, even if we put a lot of
electronics in it."
Many of your songs' lyrics tread a fine line between irony and sincerity. How important, in
relation to the music, are lyrics to you?
Nicolas: "They are very important. As we are not English and we write in English, we can find
an original way, because nobody thinks that they could say something like that in English. That's
part of the originality of Air."
You recently started your own record label Record Makers. What do you look for when signing
artists to Record Makers? Is there are certain sound you're interested in?
Nicolas: "We want to learn a lot from these people, so we want to have people with a
different sound, a different culture, and from different countries. It's important for us to stay
near to the base, because when you get famous you start meeting all these famous people, and that's
bad. When you have your own label, you keep in touch with the new artists. That's important."
Besides releasing the Sebastien Tellier record, do you already have other plans for Record Makers?
Nicolas: "The next artist we're signing is German, and we're releasing his album in a few
months. We're not based in France."
Your artwork is always very creative and challenging. How important is the total package - music
plus art - to you?
JB: "We think it's important. The image, the videos, those are important for us.
It's like the dress of the music. In fact, we try to make it mysterious. We always play with this
idea. We like when you can¹t really explain it, you just don't understand. We like things that we
don't understand, for example we like when the title is '10.000 Hz Legend', because you don't
understand what it means. We want to create the mystery. We like strange beauty in general, so we
try to make it beautiful and strange at the same time."
You've worked quite a lot with Mike Mills for your artwork and videos, especially in the 'Moon
Safari' period. How did that collaboration come about?
JB: "With Mike, it was like the beginning of a love for American design. I think
that Mike was very interested in European art in general, New European Cinema and everything... He's
a big fan of Jacques Tati, for example. Also, we are big fans of America for art reasons. The
collaboration was so easy. It was like we were forming one person. It was great."
Are you influenced at all by creative people working in other fields such as film, literature, and painting?
JB: "Yes, when we see some paintings or drawings we are very influenced by colours
in general. You can make an analogy between music and painting. For example, you know in painting
there are so many nuances of colours. You can get so many different colours. Music is the same. You
always make it well-coloured. We colour the sounds a lot, and this is important for us. Sometimes
art like sculpture or photography has got an influence on our music, for example Man Ray.
Surrealistic..."
Many of the song titles and also your artwork are influenced by science fiction. How did this
come about?
JB: "When we begin a track we have some visions. The lyrics are always about
visions or about strange ideas, and the song titles are the point of view of this vision. Most of
the time it's more about dreams."
I assume that having your own studio at home and taking your time would help in this process of
turning these dreams and visions into actual tracks.
Nicolas: "Of course. That's the secret of the new generation of artists, making music by
ourselves, in our own studio. We have our own equipment, and we can make music where we want. The
record company just rents us a place to be, but it's not a studio, just somewhere where we can put
our equipment. We recorded 'Moon Safari' and 'The Virgin Suicides' in the country, in Versailles,
and now we wanted to be back in town for this album, so we bought a little place in Paris. Now we
have another place. It's good to change our mood, to change our environment."
Do your surroundings, countryside or city, directly influence the recordings?
Nicolas: "I think so. '10.000 Hz Legend' is urban, and 'Moon Safari' was the country."
And 'The Virgin Suicides'?
Nicolas: "It was also country, but in the winter. There was snow; it was dark and cold. 'Moon
Safari' was summer in the country; 'The Virgin Suicides' was winter in the country..."
The new album, which is quite a bit darker, came out just before the summer, so that's an
interesting move then.
Nicolas: "Yeah, and 'Moon Safari' was released in the middle of January, so it's always the
wrong time of year."
What does the future hold for Air after this tour? Rest, or do you already have new projects,
remixes, or soundtracks in your head?
JB: "We'll take a break. We want to concentrate our energy by doing some original
music. We're not too much into remixes or other projects. For anything we do, we have to work a lot,
and so we prefer to work a lot for our own stuff. Except maybe the soundtracks... It's so
interesting to do a soundtrack, and we can go fast."
How does something like that come about, for example when you worked with Sofia Coppola on 'The
Virgin Suicides' music?
JB: "It's because Sofia knew 'Moon Safari', and she just loved it. She knew Mike
Mills, because she's a friend of his. She used to synchronize some preview rushes of the film with
some 'Moon Safari' music, and it was working very well. So she just called us to ask us to do the
music."
Did you watch the film before you did the music?
JB: "Yes, she sent us some rushes. Every week we had a new cut of the movie with
new scenes. We tried to record in the order of scenes, chronologically. It was funny, because the
music for the first scenes was a little bit trash. In the beginning, the first girl commits suicide.
You can feel at the beginning that the movie will be dark. That's why a lot of our music was dark as
well, because we wanted to follow this ambiance. Then there's like a sort of duality in this movie,
the pink love and photography and the dark suicide stories melting together. That's why our album
is like that, pink and dark. There's 'Playground love', which is more about love, and the other
ideas, which are more dark and acid-like."
Like a trip?
JB: "Yeah, like a trip!"
Nicolas: "'Dirty Trip'. There's a song called that, but it's talking about the character
Trip Fontaine."
Is it interesting for you to work with filmmakers like this, putting all of your visions and
ideas together?
Nicolas: "Yes, it was like we were in a band with Sofia Coppola, and she was the third
member. We followed her indications. She just drew us an image, and we just translated this image
into music. You can describe an image by using words and say: 'I see this and this and this.' Our
language is music. Talking with words is our second language, but our first language is music. For
us, we just have to describe things we see to you, but with a keyboard."
Is that how you communicate in the studio as well, going for moods and pictures?
Nicolas: "No no, in the studio it's different. You have a fire in yourself, and you have to
let it out. You start from nothing, and you start from yourself, your experience. It's not a movie."
Would you agree that music is a more honest and direct language?
JB: "Yes, of course. People pay a lot of money to go see a psychoanalyst, to say
the same things that we say by working in the studio. They often forget to go straight to the truth
inside of them. We're able to do that in music."
Nicolas: "This is also why we don't want to show any images in the show. Everyone has their
own images inside of them, so we will not tell the people what they have to see. There are no films
in the background, because everybody can make his own description of the music. We don't want
everybody to have the same things to see."
http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/air/air/884/
Meer Air op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/air
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