Air: Premier Symptomes

Once in a while, an album almost instantly changes the language of popular music. Air's full-length debut, Moon Safari, didn't seem especially revolutionary when it was released way back in 1998, and even now, it's still more soothing/interesting than radical/shocking. The disc combines some of the cheesiest elements of '70s soft-rock (whooshes of wind, creaky synthesizers) with the slow-motion vibe of contemporary house, sounding like Bread would if that band were good for dancing. Yet there's something about the French duo's retro-futuristic album that already feels like a classic: Even without really galvanizing the masses, Moon Safari has left an indelible mark on underground pop music. Premier Symptomes takes advantage of the newfound prominence of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel by collecting the team's early singles, thus giving newer Air fans an idea of both where the two came from and how Moon Safari came to be. Not surprisingly, early Air shares much in common with later Air, with the leisurely "Casanova 70" and "Le Soleil Est Pres De Moi" standing as post-effects precursors to what the band would later do. Fellow Frenchman Alex Gopher was an early collaborator with the pair, both in the electronic realm and in a band called Orange, and Air and Gopher were just two of many young French house acts who appeared on the defining SourceLab collection. (Air contributed "Modular Mix," which appears on Premier Symptomes, and Gopher his breakthrough single "Mandrake.") It's always a challenge for singles-oriented artists to make the transition to full albums, but Gopher takes a valiant stab with You, My Baby And I. Beginning with the funky "Time"—he enlists P-Funk vocalist Michael "Clip" Payne to deliver a "Chocolate City"-inspired spoken interlude, while the track also features Eddie Hazel-esque electric guitar and a suitably bouncy Bootsy-lite bass groove—the disc is especially eclectic in a year of harder-hitting house epics by the likes of Todd Terry and Carl Cox. You, My Baby And I is ultimately just more top-notch French disco, yet the presence of Billie Holiday-soaked tracks ("The Child") and space-grooves ("Ralph And Kathy," which features Air's Dunckel) makes the album compellingly diverse despite its relatively limited genre.