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Air: 10,000Hz Legend

© Katherine Wharmby

Air's new album, 10,000Hz Legend, due to be released in the US on May 29th, doesn't sound anything like their first album. Moon Safari was filled with smooth, jazzy Revlon-commercial beats. You could imagine the two guys, behind their sequencers and decks, wearing shades, even though it's nighttime, and smoking Gauloise after Gauloise. 10,000Hz Legend, however, sounds like C-3PO decided to do an album. I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if this record had been made entirely by robots.

The first track, Electronic Performers, sounds like Air members Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel kidnapped Thom Yorke and the members of Kraftwerk, made a hybrid robot out of their dismembered body parts, and commanded it to record a song. A melancholy, metallic voice lays out the record's mission statement, "We are the synchronizers...We are electronic performers."

Radio #1 features a robot Abba cover band recording a deadpan jingle about how bad their radio station is. They drone in perfect unison as their backing band pounds out metronomic four/four piano and drums. The only stupid sound in the song is the wavering human voice singing over the end of it. Proof that on this record, people suck and robots rule. At the end, though, the robot on the drums malfunctions and starts playing all sorts of noise. Then the song quickly ends. One imagines Godin or Dunkel quickly switched the robot off and took him away.

On People in the City the robots decide to check out the Big Apple. They cruise the streets, laughing at the silly humans. They list all the weird things the humans are doing, "driving, walking, talking, smiling..." Then they unleash a great symphony of mimicked city noise, and go back home to wherever robots live.

Beck seems to get along well with the robots on Don't Be Light. They eagerly provide backing music and vocals for his non-sequiturs. As the track fades out, they squelch and beep along with his whistling. It's a perfect blend of (weird) human and (weird) robot.

The robots come closest to human music on the track Caramel Prisoner, a beautiful, ethereal beam of sound that breezes from speaker to speaker. It's aural sunshine. Still, it's so perfectly constructed and executed that there remains a mechanical quality to its beauty.

On Radian, the robots even make fun of Air. The easy-listening sound of this track is just a tiny bit strange, just a tone off here and there. The robots sound as if they've learned to play an Air track note for note, but don't understand the soul of the piece. Of course they don't; they're robots.

The copyright of the article Air: 10,000Hz Legend in Electronica is owned by Katherine Wharmby. Permission to republish Air: 10,000Hz Legend in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.