Air

It’s Halloween and the sexy Franco-freaks are back in town. Nicolas Godin gestures to the crowd by fluttering a hilariously huge cape, lights swirl and flicker and the band kick into a raucous ‘Electronic Performers’. “I want to patch my soul on your brain/BPM control your heartbeats/We are the synchronizers/We are the electronic performers,” intones guest vocalist and guitarist Jason Faulkner in the best half-man/half machine drawl imaginable, and there ain’t too much to do except to swoon along in agreement.

Tonight’s seamless synthesis of crashing guitars and crisp electronic pulses is perfectly camped up to the nines, but it also illustrates just how well Air have adapted and refrained from jogging on the spot. Good timing too, just when “chill out” music is allegedly making a renaissance as if soft and soothing music never existed before.

Air prove themselves to be far too advanced for all that silly style mag claptrap, as Godin and Dunckel expertly essay a set from their last three albums. If anything, it’s the remarkable directness of the 10,000 Hz Legend numbers that latch in the brain even longer than the timesless but overplayed Moon Safari favourites. What is soporific on record is a jolt to the senses live, and the frenzy that greets an outstanding ‘La Femme D’Argent’ speaks volumes.

You don’t come to an Air gig to mooch about to some anally self-conscious wall of sound, you come to be entertained, inspired and entralled. And watch some French dude dressed up like Batman act the goat.