Air: Press reviews

The boys return from their Moon Safari

Press reviews of 10,000Hz Legend, the new album from Air.

---

The Independent

When it comes to pop music, their pitiful track record suggests that one should never place too great a trust in the French. Such, certainly, seems to be the case with the French duo Air, whose progress since their 1998 UK debut Moon Safari has been firmly retrograde. With hindsight, it now appears that that album's weightless, gossamer techno-pop was merely a blind, intended to conceal Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel's ulterior motive of restoring the most drably technocratic form of Seventies prog rock to its former prominence.

---

The Daily Telegraph

To be fair to Air, 10,000 Hz Legend (released on May 28) may be one giant leap from Moon Safari, but it's no Kid A. It takes longer than their first album to reveal its charms, but that's because it covers a great deal of ground. Tracks such as Sex Born Poison and Electronic Performers could be four or five different songs fastened together, veering from lush violins and lovelorn robotic voices to discordant guitars and crunching electronica in the space of a few minutes. There are too many ideas to take in at once.

---

The Times

10,000Hz Legend, the follow-up to Moon Safari, takes Air into dubious musical territory that a less cool band would never get away with. But Air being Air, the album has already been hailed not only as hip, but as a work of genius. That it has also been dubbed a 21st-century Dark Side of the Moon tells you to approach it with caution. 10,000Hz Legend is certainly clever, wildly ambitious and actually rather enjoyable. But is it hip? Not at all.

---

The Guardian

Having pleasantly stirred the world with their innovative, 2m-selling Moon Safari debut, Parisian duo Air have rung the changes to keep things fresh. However, as for many before them, a search for adventure (and guitars) has led to an old alley signposted "prog rock". Much of 10,000Hz Legend could be offcuts from the sessions that spawned Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

The lovely, funkier People in the City demonstrates that the humanoids who made Sexy Boy haven't been abducted, but too much here whiffs of fame-fuelled indulgence and Rick Wakeman.