MOON SAFARI
AIR
IN THE MID-90S TWO MOVEMENTS FOUGHT LIKE LUMBERING HEAVYWEIGHTS: BRITPOP IN ONE CORNER, DANCE IN THE OTHER. BUT THEN A NEW, FEATHERWEIGHT FORCE DRIFTED INTO THE RING AND CALMED EVERYONE DOWN. BONJOUR, YOU SEXY BOYS…
ANDY JONES
Ladies and gentleman we are floating in space: Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel
Paul Bergen/Redferns/Getty
RELEASE DATE
16 January 1998
LABEL Source (Paris) and Virgin
PRODUCERS Nicolas Godin, Jean-Benoît Dunckel
RECORDED AT Saint-Nom & Abbey Road
TRACKLISTING 1 La Femme D’Argent
2 Sexy Boy
3 All I Need
4 Kelly Watch The Stars
5 Talisman
6 Remember
7 You Make It Easy
8 Ce Matin Là
9 New Star In The Sky
10 Le Voyage De Pénélope
Ironically, it was the highbpm ravers who bought chillout music to the fore. The sweaty mainrooms of 90s clubland started to be complemented with lower-bpm comedown dens, and a new, calming musical movement – lovingly sold to us with images of sunrises in bars in Ibiza, but really soundtracking any warehouse dive in Essex – arrived, to swaddle many a musical style, as long as it existed at less than 90 beats per minute. Kitsch sat alongside electronic, ambient alongside classical. Loungecore or chillout, whatever you called it, these were calming tones to soothe the ecstasy-ground bones and, bang on time and right on the downtempo money, Air appeared with the perfect shoulder rub: Moon Safari.