Air |
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Thu. February 12.2004 12:00 AM EST |
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Air: Reel LifeThe French electronica team contributed to the Lost in Translation soundtrack. Nicolas Godin tells us about his favorite films. by C. Bottomley |
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(Claude Gassian/Astralwerks) |
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"We're like a big sponge," Air's Nicolas Godin explains in his off-kilter English. "We digest everything. After traveling through the United States for the first time with our debut Moon Safari, we used American [inspirations] on our next
Indeed, Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel's third album Talkie Walkie is mightily Zen. With its temple gongs, cheeky whistling, and perverted odes like "Cherry Blossom Girl," it's also the electronic maestros' most sensual record yet, the equivalent of being rubbed down with warm oils by a harem of androgynous geishas while getting your feet tickled by Lucy Liu and Johnny Depp. And that's just the way Air like it. Talkie Walkie has plenty of references to another of the group's loves: movies. One track is dedicated to director Mike Mills and the dreamy finale "Alone in Kyoto" appears in the Oscar-nominated Lost in Translation. Air provided the Moog-mad score to Sofia Coppola's first film, 1999's The Virgin Suicides. When they heard she was working with their hero Bill Murray, Godin and Dunckel leapt at the chance to contribute to a key scene. "We're in Japan a lot and always have the feeling of being lost and anxious," Godin said. "So we remembered ourselves in that and wrote Alone in Kyoto.'" Godin wants to do more soundtrack work, but as he said, "A lot of our favorite directors like David Lynch or John Carpenter do their music themselves. But why shouldn't we try? We'd like to do mainstream movies, because when you're a kid, you're not going to see Virgin Suicides - you're going to see James Bond." Since there was so much film talk in the air, VH1 asked Godin about his favorite movies, and how they've become part of Air's universe. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK Director John Carpenter is my hero. He's a genius. In France it was forbidden to see Escape From New York if you were under 13, and I was 12 when it was released. So I had to lie to go to see it. For me, it was a shock, and you never forget this kind of shock. I was scared to go out in the streets the first time I went to New York, because I've been raised on movies like Escape from New York, The Warriors, and The French Connection. I like that era, when New York was considered very dangerous. I like to know that you can go somewhere and be killed; people want to be comfortable everywhere they go and I think that's a bad idea. John Carpenter's also a genius musician. His soundtracks are scary. They have a nice sound, because they use vintage keyboards. What's cool is when people use electronic music and they're not supposed to. Carpenter is not supposed to be like Kraftwerk or something like that. He's just a humble movie director. But what he does is amazing because he didn't [set out to] do it on purpose. We started a record label in Paris called Record Makers, and just re-released the soundtrack of Assault on Precinct 13. We're very proud to have done that. I know I will never collaborate with John Carpenter because he does his own music. So for me, it's a way to collaborate with him by releasing his soundtrack. GROUNDHOG DAY I'm not the kind of guy who says people are geniuses all the time, but I think Bill Murray is great. That's why I was so happy to work on the Sofia Coppola's movie. When I found out Bill Murray was the main character, I said, "Fine, I'll do this song no problem." For me, Groundhog Day is the best Christmas movie that I know, better than Frank Capra, you know? If I do 10 interviews in a day, I'll [invariably] say, "It's like Groundhog Day." Then I realized, everywhere I go, this movie is a reference for people. You're disappointed when you realize that a lot of people have this feeling, because you think you had a personal story with this movie. When I was a kid I watched Star Wars, and I was amazed. I had this personal relationship with Star Wars. Then, when I grew up and they re-released it, I realized that the whole world has its own story with Star Wars. I was so sad about that, because I thought it was my secret! I'm very naïve and innocent about those things. SAFE I was very impressed by that movie. I never saw any of Todd Haynes' movies, but I saw a review of this movie in a magazine. There was a picture of the movie to illustrate the article. It was a beautiful photograph. It was the inside of [Julianne Moore's] living room. There were huge carpets and a big white curtain that had light going through it. It was very cold and geometric and symmetric. It had a strange vibe - something like timelessness. It was very bizarre, you really couldn't date what era this picture comes from. Just by seeing the picture I knew that the movie was for me. I had a big shock when I saw the movie. It was very fantastic. I think Safe was about this thing inside of us, where you're anxious and scared of something that you don't know what to put a name to. That's a problem nowadays for a lot of people. I don't know if Todd Haynes is American or English, but his work must have influenced a lot of people that we worked with, like Mike Mills or Sofia Coppola. SEXHIBITION #1 The fourth film is a porn movie called SexHibition #1 and it's fantastique. It's a very cool story about a woman who wants to make some archives about human beings making love and having sex to send into orbit for the aliens, so if the aliens one day want to meet the people who live on earth, they know about our sexual behavior, you know? She hires some people to make a checklist of all the things to do sexually, films it and sends the tape into space. It's a beautiful movie. I was looking at it thinking, "Something is weird." The sex part was amazing, of course. The women were very nice and they were doing a lot of things, but something else was going on. There was a message behind all this, and it was very weird. The director Kris Kramski has a vision of the world that's very special, so we called him and hired him to shoot the video of "Cherry Blossom Girl." We were very happy. I always follow my instinct and I was right. THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY I saw it when I was very young. The music was a big shock. Soundtrack composers have a great influence on the youth, because when you are six or seven years old, you don't buy records. You watch TV and movies, especially in France, where movie culture is very important. So soundtrack composers were my first contact with music. Ennio Morricone was a big influence on our present work. [Morricone inspired] the whistling on Talkie Walkie. He uses a professional whistler who is the only one in the world to be able to whistle like that. I saw him on a French TV show one day, and I couldn't believe what he does with his whistling. He's like a bird, y'know? Air always have this Western vibe, too. I don't know why. We did "Wonder Milky Bitch" on 10,000 Hz Legend. Then we did music for an audio book of City Reading by the Italian writer Alessandro Baricco. And on the new album there are banjos. I was very impressed by Deliverance and that scene when the guy played the banjo with the crazy kid. All these things are imprinted on my memory. |
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