AIR ON SOUNDTRACK

By Crash redaction

A MEETING WITH NICOLAS GODIN AND JEAN-BENOÎT DUNCKEL, ALSO KNOWN AS THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC GROUP AIR. LONG-TIME MASTERS OF THE MOVIE SOUNDTRACK, THEY HAVE NOW BECOME INVENTORS OF THE MUSEUM SOUNDTRACK WITH THE EXHIBITION “OPEN MUSEUM/AIR”, AT THE PALAIS DES BEAUX-ARTS DE LILLE.

Since their debut album, “Moon Safari” (1998), Air, the electronic duo composed of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, have always had a close relationship with all things cinematic, as they created melodies that became the soundtrack to our lives. In 2000, they did one of film’s best soundtracks for “The Virgin Suicides”, launching a collaborative partnership with Sofia Coppola that would continue through “Lost in Translation” (2003) and “Marie Antoinette” (2006). Other film work followed, both for features and documentaries like “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel” (2011), directed by Alex Stapleton and featuring appearances by Martin Scorcese, Quentin Tarantino and Jack Nicholson, who touchingly recalled working with Roger Corman in the early days of his career. Also inspired by film was the pair’s most recent album, released in 2012. Originally asked to do the soundtrack for a colorized version of Georges Méliès’s legendary 1902 classic “A Trip to the Moon”, which opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, the group later released an entire album of tracks inspired by the 14- minute masterpiece under the film’s French title, “Le voyage dans la lune”. This year, the band composed new songs for a museum as part of a concept called “Open Museum/Air”, developed by the director of the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, Bruno Girveau, with the aim of “reinventing the experience of visiting a museum”. For the new project, the two immersed themselves in the museum space and its collections. Eight speakers were then mounted in a circle in the grand atrium, creating a sound system that serves to spatialize the music, plunging visitors into a pool of harmony. The project is also notable for its technology, as it was developed using special software designed by the GRM music research group at INA, a French audiovisual school. Known as SPACES, the software is making its public debut in the Lille museum. To complete the experience, Air also teamed up with artists it has worked with in the past. On display throughout the museum are installations and works by Linda Bujoli, Xavier Veilhan, Mathias Kiss and Yi Zhou. In addition to their work for Air, the two musicians both keep busy with other projects: Jean-Benoît Dunckel recently created the group Starwalker, and Nicolas Godin crafted tunes for installations by Mathias Kiss and Xavier Veilhan while wrapping up his first solo album. A conversation with two music masterminds on their relationship to images, film and space…

What are your thoughts on the relationship between music and images?

Jean-Benoît Dunckel (JBD): For me, there are two essential moments here: the first is when the images are complete, the second is before they exist at all. When the images are already there, as is often the case with film, it can be tough because of all the constraints imposed by the director. Music is usually the last thing left to do on a film. And sometimes you have to “save” a film with music, to bring it to life… As for Air, since our harmonies are mostly simple, sometimes even childish, I think sometimes there is something incomplete about them, as though they were meant to be paired with images…
Nicolas Godin (NG): I also have two comments to make about music and images. The first is that we belong to a generation that learned about sound and music through images – through television. We started out watching TV and then we would go buy the albums we heard first on TV. And while watching TV, I paid a lot of attention to the music in movies and I would later go buy the albums, including soundtracks by Ennio Morricone, Aaron Copeland and Nino Rota. So when I eventually started making music of my own, it was this movie music that had a huge influence on me. It wasn’t something to write a manifesto about, it just made sense for me… My second remark is about the music we make as Air. Some people think Air was formed solely to make movie music, but that’s not entirely true. The music we make as Air may sound like movie
music, but creating a soundtrack is an extremely complex and risky endeavor. And, yes, music often comes at the end of the process, when a director’s anxiety can reach a fever pitch. So we’re not exactly expert soundtrack composers. Personally, I feel a strong connection to my favorite composers. I need to have a reference in mind when I compose, as though I were doing an homage. Even though the music ends up sounding like me, and the reference fades away, disappears…

How did you write the music for “The Virgin Suicides”?

NG: At that time, “Moon Safari” had just come out and was fairly successful, though the critics were still there and we were often labelled as “easy listening.” We didn’t really want to be known that way. It didn’t really reflect our attitude or music. We took Sofia Coppola’s offer as a challenge to do something more difficult, something darker. We met her through Mike Mills, who did the sleeve and music videos for our first album. Mike was working at an agency called The Directors’ Bureau, where Sofia’s brother Roman Coppola worked, too. he also did a lot of work on “The Virgin Suicides”. Looking back, I don’t think our music was right for the film at all. (laughs) It’s so somber, too somber, for a film that’s actually light-hearted…
JBD: Sofia Coppola sent us dailies as the film was shot, and that’s how we made the album, basing our work on the dailies. Once we had finished songs, Sofia went through and picked what she wanted. It was a genuine process of artistic dialogue. And in the end we put together an album that had a lot more going on than a typical soundtrack. That’s what made it such an independent album, and it ended up becoming an album that can stand on its own, with a deep artistic meaning. It’s more like an album inspired by a film than music made for a movie. And we also met Brian Reitzel during the project, who later became our drummer. I remember we were in Los Angeles to shoot the “Playground Love” video, which Roman Coppola directed. It was a good time. And it was exciting to be on set for a film shoot. It made us want to work with Sofia again, which we did with “Lost in Translation” and “Marie Antoinette”.

Which soundtracks and composers had the biggest influence on you?

JBD: For Air, we manage to produce orchestral timbres and a certain blend of instruments and sources that are recorded together to create unique sounds, like Ennio Morricone does when he combines a flute and an opera singer, for example. You can also hear bits of Francis Lai. At shows we’ve even covered some of the songs he composed for David hamilon’s film “Bilitis” (1977). And then there’s the electronic music composed by the great John Carpenter, who’s just as talented a musician as he is a director. For me, one soundtrack was particularly influential, and that’s Danny Elfman’s music for Tim Burton’s “Edward Scissorhands”. They have a very close relationship, too. They’re one of film’s great director-composer duos.
NG: I’ve listened to a lot of Nino Rota, especially his music for “Fellini’s Casanova” (1976). I would also mention Michel Legrand’s “Thomas Crown Affair” (1968). And then there’s John Williams, of course. he’s a monster. his “Star Wars” (1977) soundtrack is unforgettable. And the duo of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. Their best soundtrack may be the one they did for the show “Twin Peaks” (1990).

You have also created music for other movies, including some smaller films and documentaries, like the documentary about Roger Corman and Georges Méliès’s classic short. What motivates you to compose music for the screen?

JBD: Things usually come to us. Usually the director or one of the producers wants to work with us. And it’s interesting for us because it gives us a chance to grow, to create something new and get off the beaten path… This way we take more risks. We try new ways to create music. For the Méliès film, several groups including Lobster Production, the Technicolor Foundation and the Groupama Foundation contacted us. And we were immediately thrilled at the prospect of composing music for this silent film. There’s something completely experimental, last century, something very free about the film that we wanted to capture in our music.
NG: There was also the idea of creating music that will undoubtedly be replaced one day, but the soundtrack we made will remain tied to the era, to the time, to 2011, when it was made for the Méliès film…

What about this project of creating a soundtrack for a museum? How did the idea for the exhibition in Lille first take shape?

JBD: The director of the museum, Bruno Girveau, contacted us about opening the museum up to other perspectives. And he later developed the concept called “Open Museum”. So we worked with Régis Cotentin at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille to flesh out our ideas, both in terms of sound and the sound system, as well as the works to be displayed, and invitations to be sent to artists we had already worked with, like Xavier Veilhan. We worked with him on several occasions, notably during a performance at the Centre Pompidou and also for the “Pocket Symphony” sleeve in 2007. There is also Linda Bujoli, who combines photography, video and sculpture, and Mathias Kiss, who works on the theme of the mirror. For the soundtrack, we composed nearly an hour and forty minutes of music, consisting of six different tracks that are interconnected and contain similar themes.
NG: The idea is also to use the medium of music to help viewers interact with the artworks in the same way we interact with film. I think music amplifies the experience of seeing a work of art. The goal is also to make visitors feel like they are walking into a movie when they walk into the museum, to live that moment with more intensity, with more force than usual, to transport themselves into the works. When we composed the music for the painting of a church interior, we imagined being inside the painting, living in it (Anthonie de Lorme, “Intérieur de l’église Saint-Laurent de Rotterdam”, 1669).