Air - "Moon Safari" (1998)

What is this? An older record on the blog? This hasn't happened in like 4 years! I am going to see Massive Attack in a few weeks and I have been listening through the supports, one of which is Air, a French electronic act who debuted in the late 90s with this record, Moon Safari. Apparently the band is fairly acclaimed within the scene, and so I'm surprised this is my first time coming across them. Maybe it's just the Anglospheric bias of British music tastemakers and historians.

On listening to Moon Safari, I feel like it is representative of the watershed moment in the late 90s where the very localised Bristol-based trip hop scene was adopted into the more mainstream friendly, broader downtempo genre. A lot of the grimier, more dangerous soundscapes that characterised the work of Massive Attack, Portishead and UNKLE were toned back and replaced with looser, jazzier samples that fitted better to the Ibiza clubs that were playing this music in their chill-out rooms. However Moon Safari maintains a weirder edge that lost just a year later with the likes of Moby and Groove Armada releasing their very successful and very palatable downtempo tunes (Porcelain and At the River respectively).

Similarly, as you would expect from a French act, there is certainly a French pop flair to Moon Safari compared to their English contemporaries. It is a very gentle, smooth and sensual record; completely eschewing the more neurotic song topics and musical elements that the trip hop scene was known for. Not a single drug reference or scratchy drum breakbeat in sight. Instead elegant strings and smooth saxophones occupy the mix. The opening cut, Le femme d'argent, swoons in with a gentle conga rhythm, a smooth, funky bassline and and a jazzy keyboard riff. There's no vocals, no real melody, just loose noodling set against the tight rhythm section. A simple string backing and bubbling effects get introduced as the song progresses, giving a little more depth and progression to the mix. Its a very suave and sophisticated sounding tune. Sexy Boy on the other hand is much more passionate and sensual. The whining guitars and intimate female vocals give off a much more urgent and seductive vibe.

All I Need featuring Beth Hirsh definitely feels the closest to British trip hop with its very stripped back production and moody, yearning vocal performance that with a passing listen you could easily mistake for Portishead's Beth Gibbons or Elizabeth Fraser who featured on many a trip hop tune. You Make It Easy also features Hirsh on vocals, which sounds very Portishead if I say so myself. It's a good tune and a highlight of the second half. Talisman is a low key, bluesy number which again feels quite moody. The strings start to ramp up towards the end of the song which adds some tension and drama to the track. Ce matin-là on the other hand, is the most chilled out song on the planet with its strummed acoustic guitar and gentle trumpet motif. It sounds like an M&S summer food advert.

Not everything is a winner though. Kelly Watch the Stars is a bit of a departure for the record, with it's squelchy synths and robotic vocals sounding more Daft Punk than downtempo. It's not bad but it doesn't really retain the relaxed and elegant vibe of the tracks that proceed it. Similarly, the robotic vocals on Remember are more distracting than they add to the atmosphere of the song. On the whole, the back half of the album feels quite safe and unchallenging. It does start to sit in the background, which I get is the point; but when I give it my entire focus I'm left wishing the songs just went a little further and made more of an impact.

On the whole, Moon Safari is a good album and I can see the acclaim it received mostly off the back of the first three tracks. It certainly highlights the difference between the influence and 'importance' of a record, and the overall impressiveness of a record from front to back. Well worth checking out if you like chill electronic music, but don't expect it to be a profound boundary pushing experience.

Top Tracks: Le femme d'argent, Sexy Boy, All I Need, You Make it Easy, Ce matin-là

7/10

Massive Attack - "Mezzanine" (1998)

I have known and loved Massive Attack's most famous song, Teardrop, for years, but would have been stumped to identify any other songs from the trip hop pioneers. As I've been delving into more of the genre this year (trip hop playlists make for good background music to work too), I took the time to listen to its parent album, Mezzanine. This hour long collection of spacious and subtle electronic mood-pieces ebb and flow from tense and claustrophobic, to relaxed and laid-back. I wouldn't say it is as much a chill-out album as other trip hop releases, but it certainly has a real late-night vibe to it.

The album opens with Angel, a track I would have previously recognised from edgy perfume adverts on at Christmas. It opens with a rumbling bass-line and rattling hi-hats. Ominous sound effects and some enchanting vocals join the mix, ramping up the tension as the bass becomes more prominent. All this tension is released as a whining guitar floods in with the vocals repeating "Love you, love you, love you...". The next track, Risingson, is far less cathartic, sounding very industrial and alien. The vocals on this track just have this creepy non-emotional quality to them, which combined with the mechanical beats of the track make it feel so off-kilter and alien.

Teardrop follows this, and couldn't be further from the inhumanity of Risingson. The song features real gut-punching chord progressions as Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser soars above them with some beautiful vocals. She was inspired to write the lyrics after the death of her friend (and excellent musician and songwriter) Jeff Buckley, and you can really feel the grief and pain in her voice. Once again, this emotion is punctuated by the return of the more intense and industrial Inertia Creeps. This song isn't as alien as Risingson, with a thunderous drum beat and mantra like hook of "Moving up slowly, inertia creeps". The guitars which come in at various points of the song and the beat inspired by Turkish Tsifteteli rhythms give the track a dirty and dangerous atmosphere. Exchange gives the first real breather in the album, a purely instrumental cut which is straight out of some beach-side bar on some Mediterranean coast. It is such a chilled song, with a bouncy bass and some gliding keyboard notes on top.

The tracks on the second half of the record aren't quite as contrasting or stand out from each-other quite as much as they do in the first half, but seep into each other to build a real moody atmosphere. Dissolved Girl's sensual but sarcastic vocals from Sarah Jay Hawley and wild guitar which breaks out midway through give it a Garbage-esque vibe that I really do enjoy. Man Next Door is built around a sample of the iconic drum riff in Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks, but it is twisted and mutated into something more distant and spacious than the thunderous drumming in the original. This is combined with a sample of the Cure's 10:15 Saturday Night, to make a strange groovy instrumental base for the cover of an originally reggae song to sit on top of.

Black Milk is a very gentle song which sees the return of Fraser's soothing vocals. The track doesn't explode or change up, so acts as nice breathing room after the groovy Man Next Door. The title track returns to the emotionless vocals of Risingson, but with sparser instrumentation, with makes the track feel very tense and restrictive. This leads into Group Four, a similarly sparse song, yet Fraser's vocals contrast the rest of the song, being smooth and angelic. This really juxtaposes against DJ Ninja's mechanical and methodical vocals on the track. The album closes with a reprise of Exchange (titled (Exchange)), with added vocals. This almost acts as a wind-down for the tension built up across the second half, allowing it to dissipate as the soft keyboard note glide along.

Mezzanine is fantastic, start to finish, maintaining a consistent tone yet covering so many styles within the 12 tracks. It is very much an album just to sit back and take it all in. That being said, particularly the tracks on the first half can stand very much on their own in isolation. This might be the best entry point into this side of electronic music I've come across, being that I loved this on first listen, where things like Portishead's Dummy and the more electronic side of Radiohead took longer to sink their teeth into me.

Top Tracks: Angel, Risingson, Teardrop, Inertia Creeps, Exchange, Dissolved Girl, Man Next Door, Black Milk

9/10