Lost in Translation: an interview with Air’s JB Dunckel

By creammagazine, December 4, 2024

French duo Air often cross the line of outstanding and outlandish in their delivery of electronic music, and their bringing their brilliant sound to Melbourne on December 4, playing the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. The exclusive Melbourne show is part of  ‘Always Live’, the Victorian Government contemporary music initiative of more than 100 shows running over 17 days.  Air will be playing their excellent 1998 debut album Moon Safari in full, including the smash singles All I Need (feat Beth Hirsch) and, of course, Sexy Boy.

Cream delves into the archives and dusts off an interview with one half of the band, JB Dunckel which in retrospect reads as hilariously as a Jacques Tati movie…

 

Even before Charlie’s Angels was turned into a box office success, two men loved the kitsch ’70s series so much, they recorded a song for one of its lead characters. Jean-Benoit or ‘JB’ Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, together known as Air, wrote their single Kelly, Watch The Stars! as an ode to the brunette beauty from Charlie’s harem. Why Air would be warning Kelly to keep her head held high under the Milky Way is anybody’s guess. But then this is a band whose discography brims with absurd song titles, some reading as oddly as bastardised English slogans emblazoned over Japanese childrenswear. Wonder Milky Bitch… Caramel Prisoner… Sex Born Poison… Surfing On A Rocket… These are the names of some of the ‘love’ songs you’ve likely heard playing at your local café.

You’d have guessed correctly that Air’s first language isn’t English, although they do give the anglo lingo a good lot of practice through their songs, certainly singing a lot more in English than they do in their native tongue, French.

To the ear untrained in irony, Air’s music might sound like it connotes all that is beautiful about Paris and France: waving the red, white and blue from atop the Eiffel Tower… Sipping a latte in a quaint café alongside the Seine… Starring in a sexy film between Juliet Binoche and Oliver Martinez… Having a handsome bellboy carry six pieces of Louis Vuitton for you as the maitre d’ asks if you’d like your Moet delivered to your suite. But to the ear and mind well tuned in to postmodern pop, you’d probably have laughed at these stereotypical scenarios. Sure, Paris and France are lively, full of lovely things. And sure, Air do make lovely music, full of lively sentiment, but scratch the surface of even their most assumed love song (Cherry Blossom Girl) and you’ll find there’s a lot more tres noir going on than joie de vivre. These boys are the black sheep of French pop music.

“Because we sing in English and the French don’t understand any of it,” mutters JB Dunckel quietly, albeit in a heavy French accent. “And maybe it is because we are French, and the French don’t like the French,” he adds. “They don’t recognise that Air ‘balance’.”

I am stopping myself picturing JB lounging on a Philippe Stark sofa, Gauloises cigarette in one hand, glass of cabernet in the other, as he bitches about the manner in which his fraternity is not giving his band the liberty and freedom to make the music they like. I am stopping myself easily because I get the Air irony…

Love is in the air. Come fly with me. All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you. You are the wind beneath my wings. What goes up, must come down. You’ll be up and flying again in no time. Think of the word and concept of air and a lot of idioms and slogans spring to mind, mostly positive ones. Air keeps you alive. And, loaded with poisonous gases, it can kill you. That’s why a band caught between light romance and the dark side, love and hate, classical and techno, the serene and the erratic, the poetic and the scientific, would dare call themselves Air. Metaphorically, this outfit is the much needed oxygen

in a pop scene polluted with a lot of crap. When America is finished making a mockery of its rival France, on TV and film screens the world over, Air might be the last credible thing to come out of that country. And Air, being empathic and expressive about the good and the bad that comes of their homeland, are entitled to be dissonant in their art. After all, Paris is pretty, but there’s dog shit everywhere you walk. Croissants are nice, but they’re fattening. The French can make wonderful love, but they also started a hell of a lot of war. With this dichotomous backdrop and history its no wonder Air express two distinct qualities in their music: mainly the romantic and the cynical.

After dialing six times, I finally get through in my long-distance call to JB. And, believe me, hearing his fractured English accent in conversation is well worth the wait…

Interview by Antonino Tati

 

“Sometimes we are a bit cynical with love and sex but sometimes we want to be more romantic and tender, because we love women more and more now. We love them sexually, but also cerebrally and, how do you say, with the spirit?”

 

Hi Jean-Benoit. Have you been walking the streets of Paris, avoiding your interview responsibilities?

Yes [he sounds serious]. I went at a café down the road because I thought the interview was at 9.30pm Paris time. I just went for a coffee, because you know, in Paris, especially in my district, there is plenty of cafés everywhere.

 

A lot of the cafés in Australia play your music. Do a lot of the cafés n Paris play Air records?

Not really. Because we sing in English, and the French don’t understand any of it.

 

We tend to appreciate our homegrown talent in Australia, but when they get too big, we like to cut them down. We call it the ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’. Yet you’re saying in France, they keep you underground and don’t even give you a chance?

Yes, when you do this kind of music. But I don’t want to complain because we had a hit here in France with our third album [The Virgin Suicides score]. The movie soundtrack works very well here.

 

But that album didn’t feature you vocally, much.

I’m sure that the people here didn’t realise that we are French or maybe they would have just learnt that. I think our main success came from England. Suddenly there was this ‘Air wave’ that came through the window of an English market.

 

Speaking of air waves, do you find you get enough radio play in the UK, or elsewhere in the world?

Oh yes, in all of the United Kingdom.

 

With the strong French accent, do you find some listeners misinterpret Air’s expression of English lyrics?

Yes, I think so. On one album, there we have a song called Universal Traveller and people understand it to be Your Unique Soul Travels.

 

Actually, to me it sounded like you were singing ‘You’re Nervous And You’re Troubled’.

Oh.. Okay [laughs].

 

Well, ambiguity in lyrics is a good thing in pop music. It allows your songs to mean different things to different people.

We have our own way of making music and singing; our own vocabulary. The English people say to us that never an Englishman can speak like that, because we do some faults, some mistakes, and sometimes we don’t make it in sense.

 

Like on another of your new tracks ‘Surfing On A Rocket’, it sounds to me like you’re singing ‘Surfing On A Wildcat’. And in Australia, a ‘wild cat’ is a brand of a ‘surf cat’, which is basically a raft with sails that steers you over rough water.

That is very good because that track will be our second single.

 

 

You get a lot of cinematic descriptions to the Air sound. Even before you did ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and weren’t focusing on film soundtracks, you fell into that category of ‘cinematic’ music.

Yes, I don’t know why but I think it is because in our music there is a good balance between silence and sound. This is the reason there is room for imagination. Our music is kind of empty, with room for something else. Like a catalyst: it is not really heavy; sometimes there is no melody; sometimes it is really free. And I think freedom is perfect for a picture film, or for a ballet or something.

 

It’s also good background music for conversation. Perhaps that’s why your records make great cocktail and ‘coffee table’ albums?

Yes, but it is still deep.

 

Earlier you said it was empty.

Empty, yes, but deep.

 

How long have you and partner Nicolas been making music?

Air is existing since 1997.

 

Where did you and Nicolas meet?

Sixteen years ago in a college, or maybe there you say a university? We were studying teaching French and we had a friend in common. His name is Alex Gopher, and Alex said to Nicolas that he should meet me because he thought we are both good musicians.

 

So you hit it off right away, and began making music together immediately, maybe not under the banner of Air…

We split first, and we did more studies. Nicolas did some architecture studies and I did some scientist things: aerodynamic physics and mathematics.

 

Let me get this straight. The two of you are separately learning to teach the French language to English people, you’re introduced to each other by an electronic muso, you go on to study aerodynamic physics while Nicolas does architecture, then you come together again, call yourselves Air, and release a record called ‘Talkie Walkie’ with its cover art featuring physics formulae all over it?

Yes [laughs].

 

Talk about creating a clever concept album.

Yes, and we put all the formulae on the album cover because we are both attracted to the mathematics of it all.

 

The mathematics of it all?

Yes, mathematics is the language of the world. You can’t explain a chemical reaction, or what an artist is trying to say in a film, or what is going on with the stars and the light on the earth, unless you explain it with mathematics. And mathematics is much more universal than English. And I’m sure there is a poetry in mathematics, and in physics. So in the background of our album cover are the formulae of the theory of relativity from Einstein.

 

So you’re mixing mathematics with romantic, poetic music?

Yes, because it deals with energy, and sometimes physics can explain the transfer of energy, and that energy can be love, or it can be sexual substances.

 

“Two human beings can be attracted by some biological factor, like the blood of a boy and the blood of a girl, and that blood can work together. I’m sure that the body evolves to feel that certain kind of cells are able to fuse in the cells of a special girl.”

 

Right… Some old bands like 10CC and Sparks used to be considered the numeric-meets-poetic pop artists of the 1970s. Would you say Air are a kind of modern offering of that genre?

I know why you say that about 10CC, because one of our tracks Run has in the background little voices that sound like the 10CC track I’m Not In Love. I know a lot of 10CC, but I don’t like it so much, just that one song.

 

I always thought that song was taking the piss out of love.

Taking the piss?

 

Making a mockery of it.

Okay, I think we do that then. Sometimes we are a bit cynical with love and sex but sometimes we want to be more romantic and tender, because we love women more and more now. We love them sexually, but also cerebrally and, how do you say, with the spirit?

 

Spiritually?

Yes, sexually, cerebrally and spiritually. We like connecting with the feminine way of behaviour. It can be in the one moment, or it can be in their whole way of life. We just love them and we want some tenderness from them.

 

I’m sure you do. So where poetry was once a feminine notion, and mathematics considered masculine, your aim is to bring the two together?

Yes, that is why you hear on some of the songs angel voices that are male and female at the same time, and you can’t really say if it is a girl or a boy. Also there is a song we have called Biological where we explain that two human beings can be attracted by some biological factor, like the blood of a boy and the blood of a girl, and that blood can work together. I’m sure that the body evolves to feel that certain kind of cells are able to fuse in the cells of a special girl.

 

Er, okay… I just thought you might have been lending love songs a bit of techno touch.

Yes, I think you are right. But we do not want to do a full techno album or be a part of any electronic movement. It is a sort of very personal research and our poetic ideas are weird in a way, but it is just where we are now.

 

 

You guys are pretty ambiguous; rarely showing your faces. Is that because you love the making of music more than being in the limelight?

I think that people buy our records for the music and not for our faces. We feel more like the artists than the big stars. We are not like Mick Jagger. When you are part of a band, you don’t realise the success that you have. Because we always live in France, we don’t know always what is going on.

 

I should hope you’re counting your royalty money, though.

Yes, but the money comes in one year, or two years later.

 

So do you do part-time work in the meantime?

We just keep making our music.

 

Come on, tell the truth, you do porn soundtracks on the side, don’t you?

Noooo. We cannot do porn, because when you watch a porn movie you don’t care about the music, you just watch the animal behaviour. And we want to be listened to.

 

You must admit though, some of your songs do sound like porn music.

Maybe. It is a sort of erotic music and we try to make our music really sexy.

 

Why don’t you sing in French at all?

Because English is the universal language.

 

But Chinese is more popularly spoken than English.

Yes, in the occidental world.

 

You don’t want to sell records in China?

We would like to, but it is so far away and we do not have the connections.

 

Do you think the French will eventually get Air?

I hope so.

 

What are your five favourite records of all time?

I like Smile from The Beach Boys, Low from David Bowie, Sgt Pepper from The Beatles, Speakerboxxx from Outkast, and Faith from The Cure.

 

No French favourites?

Well, I could say Melody Nelson from Serge Gainsbourg. Yes. That one is okay.

 

AIR PLAY MOON SAFARI

WEDNESDAY 4 DECEMBER, 2024

SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL, MELBOURNE

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