Air may be too heavy a name for the music Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel create together. That’s because Pocket Symphony is oftentimes lighter than air. Even Jarvis Cocker’s sleepless night, described on “One Hell of a Party,” hasn’t enough gravitational pull to bring the mood down. Acoustic piano is prominently featured throughout, and lends the music a jazzy new age quality during “Mayfair Song.” You could say acoustic guitar is one of this work’s primary supporting actors, showing its gentle features on both “Space Maker” and “Left Bank.” It would be intellectually dishonest to call these sounds strict electronica, even though that’s the label often placed upon Air. In fact, this pair’s latest music is hardly electronic at all. Sure, “Napalm Love” sports a ping-y, synthesized melody. But for the most part, electronics provide subtle background beds, but do not demand front-and-center melodic attention. Of course, new age is an antiquated musical term these days. But if that popular ‘80s instrumental genre still thrived atop Windom Hill, today’s Air wouldn’t seem all that out of place grouped among the various Winstons and Ackerman’s of that bygone era. Beat heavy electronica is oftentimes designed to make listeners dance the night away, but Pocket Symphony causes you to drift away into meditative bliss, instead. Air is like a cool breeze blowing through an open window on a hot summer’s day.
-- Dan MacIntosh
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