This time last year Air were firmly ensconced as doyens of the ambi-lounge set and were an essential part of any dinner party as a Hostess trolley and knife and fork.
And then, they unleashed '10,000 HZ Legend'. They started to wear capes on-stage, sung about "melancholy snipers" and went off spiraling into the cosmos, where the spaceships don't fly. Although '10,000 HZ Legend' was an excellent, wildly-ambitious album, its prog-rock leanings prompted many reviewers to dig up all kinds of sonic cathedral metaphors. And in terms of sales and imagery, things went, a bit, well, 'Button Moon', really.
But now the two pasty-faced Parisians return, having commissioned some of the planet's leading remixers to revamp their 2001 space odyssey. And where '10,000 HZ Legend'was heavy, gloomy and emotionally bleak, its descendent is light, bright and whisper it quietly, fun.
Whether it's Thomas Bangalter sprinkling disco magic on 'Don't Be Light', or Adrian Sherwood giving the Frenchies a new robo-reggae direction (yes, reggae), the remixers have erased every soupcon of Pink-Floydness like a Black Hole would suck up particles of a meteor shower.
Being the Gallic eccentrics that they are, Air have only selected three tracks to be remixed. Which means that 'Don't Be Light' receives no fewer than FIVE treatments. But this doesn't equate to yawnsome repetition - as all the remixes are radically different.
Such as the afore-mentioned Monsieur Bangalter's remix. The celestial choirs and epic 'Star Wars'-synth strings which made the song great in the first place, are still all there, but are now suffused with a glittery Studio 54-ness.
After giving Daft Punk's 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' a lush reworking last year, the Neptunes cement their reputation as being the coolest and most hook-conscious remixers in the world by adding - get this - a kind of R'n'B wolf-whistling to their interpretation.
'Don't Be Light' is transfigured even further when Malibu (AKA Jellyfish's Roger Joseph Manning Jr) distorts it to sound like the theme to a Pacman arcade game circa 1984.
The original incarnation of 'How Does It Make You Feel' featured an awkward android emoting Digital Love to an earthling. But Andrew Sherwood decides to give it a spliff-addled Wailer-esque makeover. And by merging the most laissez-faire musical genre (reggae) with the most clinical genre (robotic electronica), he has created a track that is poignant, euphoric and disembodied all at once. It sounds like a long-lost duet between Bob Marley and Dark Vader, and is, inevitably, tres fantastique.
You also get Modjo giving People In The City a cocktail jazz rehash, (which eventually meanders into Stevie Wonder-style skatting) while French producer Jack Lahana's interpretation features cheergirl-style chanting ("Bitches In The City!") and comes across like a cockier Princess Superstar.
The album finishes with a bonus out-take, a folkish ballad called 'The Way You Look Tonight', which proves that when Air sing without the aid of a vocoder, they're awful. And sound like Gordon Haskell murmuring in the bath.
The absence of remixed versions of genius single 'Radio Number One' and Beck collaboration The 'Vagabond' will irk many fans. But 'Everybody Hertz' is further proof of Air's increasingly capricious bent. Where they're heading next, nobody know...
