Let's not mess about: '10,000 Hz Legend', Air's second album proper, is a tremendously odd hour of music. Those expecting a logical sequel to 1998's seductive two-million seller, 'Moon Safari', should try track ten here, 'Don't Be Light', for size. It begins with massed strings and ethereal banshee howls straight out of a space opera scored by John Williams, then switches abruptly to a motorik boogie in the style of very early Kraftwerk. Just after a wayward fuzz guitar break - and just before the virtuoso whistling solo - Beck turns up to solemnly intone a sermon on modern living.
The key, it seems, is about "fabricating a new abandon". This is the moral heart of Air's extraordinary new album: what appears flawless and beautiful, when constructed by man and machines, is not to be trusted. Hence this music - transcendentally lovely, but incredibly creepy, too.
The reveries of 'Moon Safari', then, are exposed as fraudulent. Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel are playing a dangerous game, undermining every idyllic melody with an ominous electronic hum, delivering every emotional pledge in emotionless, robotic tones.
Against the odds, however, they pull it all off. '10,000 Hz Legend' is already being proclaimed as prog-rock, thanks to the airbrushed sci-fi sleeve and Dunckel's appearance at a recent London show resplendent in one of Rick Wakeman's cast-off capes. And, for sure, some of these trippy longueurs recall Pink Floyd.
But the seriousness is underpinned by a few decent jokes and there are no real solos, indulgences or gratuitous time changes. Rather, tracks like 'Radian' (a bewitching pastoral as fine anything Air have ever done) have more in common with early singles like 'J'ai Dormi Sous L'Eau' and 'Le Soleil Est Pres De Moi': chilled, richly orchestrated, truly unearthly.
Only the single, 'Radio #1', has the sprightliness of 'Sexy Boy', and even then it's jerky rather than gushing, with a marching beat and a bizarre effect reminiscent of Kraftwerk's 'The Robots' played on a pub piano. Everyday life is alluring but alienating ('People In The City'), success isn't all it's cracked up to be ('Lucky And Unhappy'). Romance can be an illusion ('Sex Born Poison'), reduced to dubious power games that revolves around blow-jobs ('Wonder Milky Bitch'). The wide-eyed, space-age optimism of 'Moon Safari' was a cruel joke, it seems.
And the cumulative effect is like standing on top of Mount Everest and admiring the view, only to discover it's just a superbly-painted backdrop. Even the most miraculous triumphs of aesthetics, Air imply in that playful and profound French way, are rooted in artifice, underpinned by darker motives. But does that make them any less enchanting? In this case, emphatically not.
