Air
Love 2 - astralwerks
FILTER Grade: 88%

Little did Air know that when it dropped its first proper record, Moon Safari—which sent the debonair “Sexy Boy” crashing onto the airwaves—that the group’s deconstructive approach to composition would form the methods for American electro pop. Where “Sexy Boy” soared into the night and “Kelly Watch the Stars” took us into space, Lady Gaga took us to…well, text speak. Minimal to the point of struggling with words (indeed “Pap-r-a-zi” is a monumental one-syllable development from “Pk-rr-face”), short and sweet was the way in which Air blew-in with Moon Safari.

So it could be easily claimed that Air rebelled against the success of its debut. The band’s soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides and 10,000 Hz Legend took the instrumentation beyond the Moog lounge bar laboratory and into an overgrown orchestra pit. Yet the music always worked in layers—motifs set adrift and left to randomly collide with spine tingling effect—which inevitably clashed into orchestral sparks. Love 2 carries on the dense approach to composition. Starting with a fade up for “Do the Joy,” its dirge-stoner-rock-bass riff trips under inter-playing space voices, proudly declaring to “do the joy” as though it was the beginning of Star Wars. Humor abounds in this cheeky tangent to all that’s gone before it.

Air has always had strong sonic themes and Love 2’s strength is giving these motifs even more movement and diversity. Pocket Symphony was based on an icy stillness; it progresses glacially, even making Jarvis Cocker sound refreshingly earnest in the process. As the record continues, it sets the bass bobbling over a calypso keyboard rhythm. There are flute riffs, the word “love” repeated in monotone before fading to make way for heavier synth parts and it’s all heady and calculated. However, there’s clarity to everything you hear, such as the springing guitar menace of “So Light is Her Footfall” like The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” Similarly, “Be a Bee” pitches droned piano notes under surf guitar, before mangling electronic voices over the top in a manner as bizarre and irreverent as Super Furry Animals at their angered best.
Love 2’s highlight comes in “Night Hunter”, which shimmies like Can, pairing electro blips with piano runs before the keys fully collapse into harmony. The pattern of tense build-up into harmonic relief is one Air utilizes throughout the album to a wonderful effect, casing each rhythmic permutation in a variety of sounds and delicate arrangements. It is an album that can be completely ignored, like a Satie refrain, or listened to obsessively, relishing in the diversity and depth of arrangements. Now, like the days of Moon Safari, Air is as essential as ever, and has succeeded in writing another album of inspirational, tantalizing music.