We were promised jetpacks. Instead, gen X had neoliberalism, the new world order and pre-millennium tension. To soothe it, we got Air’s debut Moon Safari, the 1998 space-age bachelor pad album that offered a nostalgic passport back to a future that never materialised in quite the way we expected. Immediately, Air (French duo Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel) were everywhere – not in our faces, but part of our very atmosphere: in shopping malls, on soundtracks, in every cafe and lounge.
Inevitably, Moon Safari dwarfed everything the duo has produced since, and Air haven’t made an album since 2012’s brief sojourn Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), the title of which suggested they knew they would never escape the shadow of their debut. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, they’ve leaned in, playing the album in its entirety and in order, plus an extra set’s worth of songs from their half-dozen albums.
