French Duo Air On Bringing ‘Moon Safari’ to the  Hollywood Bowl: “Los Angeles Is Actually a Big Studio”

It’s been a busy stretch for Air’s Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. For the past 20 months and counting, the French duo has been on the road celebrating the 25th anniversary of their landmark debut, Moon Safari. Technically, the album hit that milestone in 2023, but Air has never been a band bound by the calendar.

That year saw the release of a 25th-anniversary vinyl edition of Moon Safari, followed in 2024 by a deluxe box set featuring a remastered album, Dolby Atmos mix, unreleased demos, rarities, and Mike Mills’ 1998 documentary Eating, Sleeping, Waiting & Playing. Also arriving in 2024 was Blue Moon Safari, a full-album reimagining by UK producer and Frank Ocean collaborator Vegyn, released on Record Store Day—just months before Air’s appearance at the Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony. This summer, the pair played a string of major festivals, including a standout moment at We Love Green in June where Charli XCX joined them for “Cherry Blossom Girl.”

“I feel like I’m living in 1998. I play Moon Safari. I sign Moon Safari albums. It’s a time capsule really,” a jet-lagged Godin tells The Hollywood Reporter from his dressing room at Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional, where Air has just finished soundcheck at the 10,000-capacity venue.

They now return to North America to once again perform Moon Safari in full, alongside select favorites from their catalog. This includes a couple of songs from their soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, which also hits the quarter-century mark this year. Due on September 26 is a new edition of the album with an analog mix of the original tapes and a deluxe digipak similar to Moon Safari featuring a spatial mix on Blu-ray plus rarities and demos.

Air’s U.S. run opens at the Hollywood Bowl with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra Sunday night, conducted by longtime collaborator Roger Neill, who arranged the orchestral parts for their songs. It marks Air’s second time performing at the iconic venue with an orchestra, the first being more than 20 years ago when Neill wrote the arrangements for their inaugural symphonic concert.

Touring at this pace is unusual for a duo known for carefully guarding their work-life balance. “In France we say, ‘Don’t lose your life to earn it,’” says Godin. Adds Dunckel: “If we are like machines, it’s not good to press and to exploit too much the machine. You have to take care of it for it to work better.”

Despite having played many of these same cities only a year ago, they insist the return feels different. The Hollywood Bowl, in particular, remains “such a magic place”—and this time, they are determined to enjoy it.

What are your memories of playing the Hollywood Bowl in 2004?

Nicolas Godin: I [had so much] stage fright that I did not enjoy the show. I didn’t live in the moment enough. Sunday, I will not give a shit or think of stage fright. I will be in the moment, and I will enjoy it from the first minute to the last minute, whatever happens.

How is it working with Roger Neill as arranger again?

Godin: Roger is my favorite arranger. It’s very delightful to organize an orchestra with him. The orchestra sessions we did for 10,000 Hz Legend in 2000 is one of my best memories in-studio in my life. Each time we do a live performance, we call him. Orchestra works well with us because we have a very soundtrack-y style. We learned music watching TV and films, so we naturally have this style to use orchestras.

Has communicating your ideas become easier over the last 25 years?

Godin: Yeah. Because we are French, it’s not easy to communicate with us. We have a strange way of seeing things. We’re kind of in a parallel world. But Roger is doing a very good job to understand us, which is great. But that’s what makes our style. We were in this little town called Versailles. We were outside of the show business pressure. When we had success, we could have moved to LA or to London, and we didn’t do it. We didn’t know the rules and we made a lot of mistakes.

What are you preparing for the Hollywood Bowl performance?

Godin: Most of the tracks on the albums, we will produce the orchestra. It’s always frustrating for us to write for orchestra on the record, and when we go on stage, we don’t have that. I always say “on the record, we do what we want, but on stage, we do what we can to hear the songs as they should be.” It’s such a big privilege. I wish we could have an orchestra every night.

Will there be other musicians on stage besides the orchestra?

Godin: We have a drummer. There’s me and JB. We have a lot of equipment backstage that we control with MIDI. We have a lot of vintage gear, vocoders, synthesizers, but nobody can see it. On stage, the set is very minimal, but we control everything.

Air has a strong connection with Los Angeles.

Jean-Benoît Dunckel: We have been influenced by Los Angeles a lot because of all our musician friends. They explained to us their way to produce albums. They made us discover some incredible music. It had a huge influence on our music. We understand Los Angeles. I think Los Angeles is actually a big studio. It has the power to attract the art of the world and to transform it into something else, as a movie or as an album or as a video.

Godin: When we were children, we were watching TV, and believe me, it’s very opposite to Versailles. We were watching Starsky & Hutch, Columbo and all these TV shows. When we went in L.A., we felt like we were inside our TV set. As a child or as a teenager, America had such soft power all over the world. The clothes and the skateboarding and the milkshake and stuff like that. When you grow up in Versailles, it was kind of exotic. We were dreaming in front of our TV sets. I have to say, the problem in life is it’s never as good as on the TV set.

You were in Los Angeles almost exactly a year ago on what seems like a never-ending Moon Safari anniversary tour. What’s spurring you to be on the road for so long?

Dunckel: It’s a bit too much this touring. But we love our fans. It’s very impressive to see how the band has changed into people’s minds now. We see there are some new generations of people who like Air. We have some young fans, maybe driven by Billie Eilish or Charli XCX. We love our fans, and we want to give the best to them because we know it’s not going to be forever.

How did Blue Moon Safari, the Vegyn reimagining of the album, come about?

Godin: We wanted to find someone who could do the whole album. We wanted to have the unity in the record. And also, because when we were recording Moon Safari, there is this Massive Attack album by Mad Professor. We were looking for someone who could do the same thing, like someone else’s vision. I think it works well. My favorite track is “New Star in the Sky.” It’s almost better than the original.

You’ve also released solo albums, soundtracks and music for museums. Any chance of a new Air album?

Dunckel: The three last official band albums we did, we felt that people were not so excited anymore. Maybe it’s because we became too good. Our music became too sophisticated, and maybe people are not sensitive to sophistication. They want something else, like energy, emotion, a different vibe. And maybe we lost our way in the process of making albums, and so maybe it was necessary to stop for a few years. Also, to do soundtracks and other project projects beside Air helped a lot too, because we learned so many things with other artists or with other process of doing music. There are so many albums released every year. It is good to stop and maybe to think about doing something new one day. I don’t know.

Godin: When I was a kid, there was this big industry with all these great records. I wanted to be part of the game. But then I had to compose songs, to make records, to be in that game. But now the game is over because of streaming and the music business, if you’re not a hip-hop artist or if you’re not a big superstar, there’s no more activity.

It’s very different from when we started. The whole system is gone. It’s less fun. But going on stage and performing live, the dream is still on when you do that. When the light comes down and you show up on stage, it’s still like in the past, like when I was dreaming.