Air: 'Pocket Symphony'

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ONE THING AIR needed to record its latest album: different cables. As analog holdouts, the French duo of Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin has only recently cottoned to the computers that the rest of us — including many of Air's musical contemporaries doing space-lounge, orchestral pop — depend on.

It took the band three years to finish "Pocket Symphony," a USB-enabled album that ushers Air into the late 20th century. Perhaps the quiet spell owes to a learning curve.

The pair even called on composer Pierre Boulez, director of L'Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, a Centre Pompidou-affiliated organization devoted to the study and development of acoustic-electric music. (Only in France does a nonprofit exist to build plug-ins for Air.)

But for all the new technology, "Pocket Symphony" hardly sounds newfangled. The album is remarkably pared down, even effortless. That's due in part to the influence of Godin — or rather, on Godin: the musician spent a year learning Eastern classical music, developing his skill on the koto and the shamisen and other instruments under the tutelage of an Okinawa master.

Godin's trip to the Far East brings Air back full circle to the sound of its debut album, "Moon Safari." Both "Talkie Walkie" and, in particular, "10,000 Hz Legend" strayed from the atmospherics that earned the band critical acclaim and devoted fans; those two albums, in fact, sound more like the product of computers and gadgets than "Pocket Symphony"'s layered but dissolvable tracks. If anything, the Eastern sounds lend this album the half-serious, half-cocked attitude that Air accomplished on previous efforts through future-retro playfulness.

The scattered piano and koto instrumentation on "Mer du Japon" are a slight Oriental diversion but not a radical departure. In fact, there's much more influence coming from across The Chunnel than the Silk Road. Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker lends vocals to one track ("One Hell of a Party") and writing creds to another. The syncopated backbeat on "Napalm Love," a more up-tempo number, sounds like that of the opening track on Radiohead's "Amnesiac." The most striking British touches are on "Left Bank," a track that begins with an acoustic-guitar hook that would fit right in on Love's "Forever Changes."

Typically, Air albums unfold organically from their opening tracks. "Space Maker" is not really an exception: The tapped glockenspiel gives way to mellow acoustic guitar and layered atmospherics, which rise and subdue. But it's by new means and new influences that Air makes its most representative album since its debut.

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Images courtesy Air & Astralwerks