French Duo AIR Bring Sophistication and Class to The Piece Hall in Halifax [Photos]

Legendary French duo Air brought their Moon Safari to the iconic Piece Hall in Halifax in celebration of the 25th anniversary of this iconic album.

Moon Safari, with its chilled progressive pop and slow atmospheric feel, proved a perfect soundtrack to the warm summer’s evening – in fact, you’d be hard pushed to find a better song to fit the setting than the 7-and-a-half-minute instrumental “La femme d’argent” that opens the album.

They put on a completely unique performance with a stage within a stage, as a long box open only at the front housed the band and all the instruments, with a drummer in the middle and Nicolas and Jean-Benoit at opposite sides to each other.

The box unit incorporated its own light show that fit perfectly with the music and made a focal point of the band, whether they were in silhouette or fully lit up. It felt, at times, though, like you were peering through someone’s letterbox to see what was on the other side, but it gave the viewer an overall cinematic experience. Like watching the lounge band of the Starship Enterprise.

The overall pace of Moon Safari doesn’t really change over its duration, and the Piece Hall’s BSL interpreter must have had one of their easiest shifts ever. Once the main event had come to a close, though, they played a series of tracks from other albums that saw them become even more psychedelic and expansive, like on the fuzzy whig out of “Don’t be Light,” which was a highlight.

AIR, the album that soundtracked a generation’s late nights and fuzzy hangovers and the unique technology-led delivery of it 25 years later, was a truly unique experience that oozed with the sophistication and class of the French duo and is probably the closest to space travel us mere mortals will ever experience.

Magnifique!

AIR @ The Piece Hall (Halifax, UK) on June 26th, 2024

21 photos