Air fill a weird gap in music. Not entirely owning the downbeat genre they were purported to help shape in the ’90s, they’ve miraculously managed to take French ’60s pop and reference muzak and somehow elevate it into futuristic psychedelia. Touring as one of the main attractions for this year’s Vivid LIVE festival, Air are also circling the globe as part of their 20th anniversary tour.
The Sydney set covered a broad scope of their two-decade career, opening with Talkie Walkie’s ‘Venus’ and ‘Cherry Blossom Girl’, and squeezing 10 000 Hz Legend’s ‘Don’t Be Light’ in between. The band of four musicians were all dressed in white (who does laundry while on tour? Do they travel with 30 pairs of white pants?), with a simple but effective light show draping them in either darkness or light throughout.
The addition of video was welcome, but the graphics left a little to be desired; with such rich and sophisticated sounds, you’d hope for visuals to match, but this looked more like looped graphics bought from iStock mixed in with the Air band logo at various intervals.
All in all, the Frenchmen proved their world-class ability to use minimalism to create a grand soundscape, with the four performers recreating everything live. The addition of a drummer who looked (and acted) like he was more used to playing in punk bands was genius, giving the whole set a huge boost and taking the sound up a few notches for the live arena.
Air might inhabit an odd space culturally (is it nostalgic or just meant to be inoffensive, or is it high art?), but they do it with a nonchalance only the French can pull off. Air don’t care if you think they’re boring, and if you engage with it, you’ll find they’re anything but.
Air played the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday May 30. Photo by Prudence Upton
