French Band Air Blows Chicago Crowd Away

French band Air played to a seemingly mellow crowd at the Auditorium Theatre Oct. 5 — one of the final shows in their heralded Air Play Moon Safari tour. 

The musical duo stopped by Chicago with this revival tour of their 1998 debut album Moon Safari, returning to the city a year after playing the same show for 2024’s Moon Safari tour.

Air, the French downtempo electronic band, composed of Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, received international acclaim after the release of their aforementioned 1998 album. The widespread buzz around their debut drew the attention of Sofia Coppola, a budding director looking for a composer to soundtrack her first feature film “The Virgin Suicides.”

Now, the pair is predominantly known for their contributions to the 1999 film soundtrack, which is still highly influential and adored in both electronic music and cult film spheres 25 years after its release. “The Virgin Suicides” soundtrack found prominence in younger audiences through the use of social media, like trending TikTok audios.

At precisely 9 p.m., the venue’s amber antique velvet curtains rose, revealing an oblong, white linoleum cube space which sat stark against the regality of the venue. Synthesizers, guitars, basses and a drum set laid neatly in the post-modern lightbox. 

While the audience watched in stillness, a projection of two ephemeral white eyes blinked, seemingly observing the audience as well. The house lights dimmed, and now, encased in darkness, the pearlescent eyes in the otherworldly light served as a quiet reflection on embarking on this Moon Safari.

Walking so calmly they seemed to be without gravity, the French duo and their accompaniment speckled the stage in all-white ensembles, picking up and taking place at their instruments. 

Soon the melodies, samples and riffs of “La femme d’argent” began to swell about the room with entrancing, synced light projections filling the white box where they performed. Before the end of the seven minute track, oscillating synthesizer beats built audience energy up, with many members of the seated crowd rising to their feet in dance and visual awe. 

Yet, like the metaphorical tour moon-pontoon dipped into a jungle-crater, the second track of the night hit the audience right in the sweet spot. 

The deep, upbeat, sensual synths of “Sexy Boy” seemingly entranced the crowd into their own gravity. Lifting out of chairs and into dance, atmospheric Euro-electronica fans from all walks of life swayed in apparent delight to this ecstatic, heavy-breathing homage to lust. 

Stage lights shone like stars among the crowd and engrossed the post-modern, unspeakably French cube while the duo sang in voice-warped harmony. 

Throughout the show, the band frequently utilized different modes of voice modification and artificial falsetto, yet their engineering and skill seemed leagues above popular usages of autotune and tone correction. 

Using a vocoder which’s sound harkaned early Daft Punk, a fellow French electronic two-piece, “Kelly Watch the Stars” seemed to mellow out the crowd with vibrant purple and blue pixelized lights evoking images of an 8-bit galaxy. 

The show began to take the crowd into the sky, looking above the moon and into the galaxy of creativity. Perhaps only France could produce something so delightfully bizarre. 

Delving into a serene red light, the duo and accompaniment played song after song of melodic tunes which could lull even the wildest of jumping monkeys into a sweet rest on their moon-bed. 

Yet after riding out the entrancing waves of light and music which happened upon audience eyes, the house lights rose and the band mouthed “Merci, merci” and bowed in gratitude.

The audience, much like the proletariats seizing King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette during their flee from the Reign of Terror, seemed to sense a trick afoot. Amid hesitant clapping, for encore, the lights dimmed once again and the boxed stage was set aflame with red, pulsating light as fog billowed out from the stage wings.

To creeping, building music, Air returned and began to play songs off of their other albums. Starting with “Venus” off their 2004 album “Talkie Walkie,” the set displayed bursts of shooting light zooming past the band, moving the energy up and up into infinity and beyond. 

After walking through tracks off the original motion picture score for “The Virgin Suicides,” the duo burst into in a medley of every song on the setlist, with rising oscillating synths and circling lights seeming to mesmerize the audience.

“Don’t Be Light” concluded the second section of the show with a seemingly never ending ecstasy of rhythmic synths, rock riff interludes, projections of large red lips speaking monologues, resounding basslines and incredible precision in both energy and practice.

Finally able to exhale after the musically orgasmic electronic affair, the duo and their accompaniment once again addressed the audience and muttered their mercies before exiting the stage. 

But the audience howled with whoops, hollers and frantic applause for more from the moon safari guides. After being taken to the moon, these animals in the audience were hungry for more musical bananas — and boy, was the following encore bananas fresh off the stalk.

In their encore, Air played a rendition of “Alone in Kyoto” off “Talkie Walkie” with gentleness infused into their mixture of electronic and acoustic instruments. The curiosity in the short, fast repeating notes seemed to lull the room with great cosmic wonder without uttering a single lyric on the matter. 

Contrastingly, in their actual finale song“Electronic Performers” off 2001 album “10,000 Hz Legend,” the sensual, deep and trip-hop-esque bass beats and vocoded singing of ironic, yet heartfelt lyrics seemed to enrapture the whole of the venue.

Bringing rising violins alongside pulsating synths inside a futuristic lightbox on an antiquely regal stage, Air sent messages along time codes which transcended boundaries of performer and audience, space and time and moon and safari.