The Pop Corporation

Britpop was slowly being tipped into the landfill and the UK pop-loving populace were looking for something else. Something a little less brass and more cosmopolitan. While a lot of the lads traded their shell-toes for Airwalks and air-scratched their way through Big Beat, the flip was ushered in by two Frenchmen who went by the name of Air.

Jean-Benoît Dunckel said of the time: “Daft Punk were down the street from us in Paris and we could almost hear the music they were making when we opened the window during band sessions. It was the late ’90s, and Paris suddenly had this incredible electronic music scene: all these clubs were opening up.”

“We came along with this alien, psychedelic, loungecore music you’d listen to on a Sunday morning after you’d been out clubbing the night before. And one month after Moon Safari came out, we were huge.”

While the French underground has had a renaissance with reappraisals of the likes of Serge, Dutronc, Vannier, Brigitte Fontaine, et al – largely, the world regards the French as being pretty bad at music. That’s an unfair judgement, obviously, but it’s something that resonates with the French themselves, as they tend to look toward UK and American groups for their kicks.

However, the French house scene exploded with Daft Punk, Etienne De Crecy, Cassius, Mr Oizo, swiftly followed by rock and electro-clash outfits like Phoenix, Uffie, all sharing a ’70s trash aesthetic and it worked. Air, however, were slightly different.

Nicolas Godin: “Playing guitars loud through amps is great fun when you’re 15 and full of hormones, but French people are better at being chefs or fashion designers. Rock music is not really in our culture. But electronic music is different. When we discovered it, suddenly we had an outlet.

“Ever since I was a child, I’d dreamed of making a classic album – and I actually did. The night we did Sexy Boy, I knew my life would change. Before Daft Punk and us, French pop was synonymous with Sacha Distel. I hated it. But electronic music meant you could make cool music without being a rocker.”

Air’s space exotica was exactly what people were looking for and pop and rock bands started to incorporate their elegant synths and samplewerk, as seen with the complete 180 from outfits like The Cardigans. Volume wasn’t suddenly a necessity and with songs like ‘All I Need’ and ‘La Femme D’Argent’ became the hottest thing with people wanting to make-out and those wanting to slum it elegantly in a cocktail bar, far away from the beer and pills of the indie clubs.

It was a comedown album that was sophisticated and could be listened to during the week too. It absolutely conquered the world and soon, there’d be inferior downbeat copycats all over the place, and a new wave of easy-listening followed suit, with cutesy bossa-nova covers from Nouvelle Vague, who are accidentally responsible for every sad-face acoustic cover of a classic and John Lewis advert ever since.

Forward looking and retro-leaning, ‘Moon Safari’ scratched an itch that no-one knew they had until they heard the infectious and gorgeous ‘Kelly Watch The Stars’ and ‘Sexy Boy’

Today is January 16th 2023, and ‘Moon Safari’ is 25 years old.

Listening to it now, you can still see why it was the darling of every critic and pop fan in the world. It swoons, it’s groovy, it’s got style and it’s nice to remember that not all music has to lamp you over the head to get your attention.

And in a darkly funny turn, the accusations that the French had bad taste show up again, what with the world conquering LP only managing to peak at number 21 in the French charts. In the US, movies and ad-spots queued up to throw money at the band, and before too long, they were dabbling in space prog and then providing the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suicides’.

Transport yourself to the stars again and give this fine LP another spin to celebrate a quarter of a century since it’s release.