Our album of the month is the iconic Moon Safari album. And maybe, like Jamie, you were lucky enough to see them on Saturday 2 August at the Fringe by the Sea...
Inspired by their current tour, our August pick is Moon Safari, the debut album from French duo Air. Released in January 1998 by Virgin Records, it received immediate acclaim and has since become a touchstone of modern electronic music. From the first moments, it’s clear Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel set out to create a specific atmosphere, an effortlessly chic, cinematic soundscape that feels like a voyage through both outer space and a retro-futurist dream.
The pair’s backgrounds, Godin trained as an architect, Dunckel as a mathematician, perhaps inform the precision and structure in their compositions. Their influences are as eclectic as their instrumentation, drawing from French film composer François de Roubaix and chanson legend Serge Gainsbourg, to Kraftwerk, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and the holy trinity of Bowie D, Reed L, and Pop I. This breadth of inspiration can be heard across the album’s variety of moods: the tender, melancholic “Ce matin-là” (a track Lemon Jelly might owe more than a little to), the warm electro-pop of “You Make It Easy,” and the futuristic shimmer of “Le voyage de Pénélope.”
Moon Safari opens with “La femme d’argent,” perhaps the most stylish piece of waiting room music ever conceived, before sliding into the instant classic “Sexy Boy”, still a dancefloor favourite nearly three decades later. Incredibly, the band almost left it off the album, fearing it was too different from the rest of the material. Instead, it became their signature track, built entirely on Dunckel’s vocoder-infused vocals rather than samples. In fact, only the opener uses any samples at all, while just two tracks: “All I Need” and “You Make It Easy”, feature guest vocals, courtesy of the ethereal Beth Hirsch. The rest is handled by the duo themselves, often heavily processed into alien textures.
The arrangements are deceptively simple: single notes, sometimes slightly discordant, layered into lush, dreamy soundscapes. Air later backronymed their name as Amour, Imagination, Rêve (“Love, Imagination, Dream”), and this ethos is reflected in every track. Much of the album’s warmth and texture comes from a combination of analogue synths (Korg MS-20, Moog, and Syrinx) alongside traditional guitar, bass, and drums.
While Moon Safari sits comfortably under the electronica banner, its slower tempos and emphasis on atmosphere set it apart from the club-focused dance music of the late ’90s. It heavily influenced downtempo and chillout, paving the way for the popularity of acts like Zero 7, Röyksopp and Moby’s Play.
The album’s cinematic quality was also quickly recognised, Sofia Coppola immediately snapped up the pair to score her debut feature The Virgin Suicides soon after release. In retrospect, Moon Safari wasn’t just groundbreaking for its music; it also helped usher French and European electronic acts into the UK and US mainstream, riding the wave of so-called “French touch” alongside Daft Punk, Cassius, and Étienne de Crécy.
More than 25 years later, Moon Safari remains a masterpiece: warm, stylish, and timeless. Whether you’re discovering it for the first time or revisiting an old favourite, it’s an album to sink into; a soundtrack for late nights, early mornings, and dreams that drift between the stars.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Jamie
And here is a souvenir pic taken at this very special concert in North Berwick:
Moon Safari is available on 1LP of 180g black vinyl for £22 - click to buy your copy now!