A sure shot fixation with any Air album is their experiment with luscious,translucent sounds and electro-pop progressions that titillate the neurons of any listeners. Armed with voluptuous pop/rock elements to succinct space melodies garnered with warped synthesizers and groovy beats,the French duo Nicolas Godin and Jean Benoit Dunckel is back with their ninth record titled Love 2. The geeky musicians,Godin with his architecture degree and Dunckel,the mathematician,have placated their audience with past albums like the sublime Moon Safari that had delivered tracks like Sexy Boy and the stoner-rock Talkie Walkie. Air cannot be dismissed as just another chill-out genre as the band weaves their trip-hop ambience and krautrock-ish elements with a little bit of retro-synth tones creating music which sounds somewhere between Moby and Portishead,while some tracks could easily fit in a Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie.Love 2 is more forthcoming with their wah-wah guitars,retro-pop moog synthesizers,fuzzy bass lines,bubbling keyboards eloquently crafted with guest drummer Joey Waronker providing the ideal punch to deliver a retro-futuristic,floating-in-space feel to the record. The opening track Do the Joy sways magnificently as a fried metallic voice intones the world is on the brink/on the brink of our extinction and moves on to a bass driven Love. The psychedelic guitar laden So Light is her footfall gives way to the upbeat Be a Bee followed by vintage progressions and swinging tempo on Missing the Light of the Day. Pensive melodies galore in Tropical Disease while the hazy vocal track Heavens Light moves on to the refreshing soft rock crooning on Sing Sang Sung.Night Hunter and Eat my Beat churns around a vortex of rollicking beats canoodled with rippling synth melodies. mohan.kumar@expressindia.com
