Dotmusic

Let's not mess about: '10,000 Hz Legend', Air's second album proper, is a tremendously odd hour of music. Those expecting a logical sequel to 1998's seductive two-million seller, 'Moon Safari', should try track ten here, 'Don't Be Light', for size. It begins with massed strings and ethereal banshee howls straight out of a space opera scored by John Williams, then switches abruptly to a motorik boogie in the style of very early Kraftwerk. Just after a wayward fuzz guitar break - and just before the virtuoso whistling solo - Beck turns up to solemnly intone a sermon on modern living.

The key, it seems, is about "fabricating a new abandon". This is the moral heart of Air's extraordinary new album: what appears flawless and beautiful, when constructed by man and machines, is not to be trusted. Hence this music - transcendentally lovely, but incredibly creepy, too

The reveries of 'Moon Safari', then, are exposed as fraudulent. Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel are playing a dangerous game, undermining every idyllic melody with an ominous electronic hum, delivering every emotional pledge in emotionless, robotic tones.

Against the odds, however, they pull it all off. '10,000 Hz Legend' is already being proclaimed as prog-rock, thanks to the airbrushed sci-fi sleeve and Dunckel's appearance at a recent London show resplendent in one of Rick Wakeman's cast-off capes. And, for sure, some of these trippy longueurs recall Pink Floyd.

But the seriousness is underpinned by a few decent jokes and there are no real solos, indulgences or gratuitous time changes. Rather, tracks like 'Radian' (a bewitching pastoral as fine anything Air have ever done) have more in common with early singles like 'J'ai Dormi Sous L'Eau' and 'Le Soleil Est Pres De Moi': chilled, richly orchestrated, truly unearthly.

Only the single, 'Radio #1', has the sprightliness of 'Sexy Boy', and even then it's jerky rather than gushing, with a marching beat and a bizarre effect reminiscent of Kraftwerk's 'The Robots' played on a pub piano. Everyday life is alluring but alienating ('People In The City'), success isn't all it's cracked up to be ('Lucky And Unhappy'). Romance can be an illusion ('Sex Born Poison'), reduced to dubious power games that revolves around blow-jobs ('Wonder Milky Bitch'). The wide-eyed, space-age optimism of 'Moon Safari' was a cruel joke, it seems.

And the cumulative effect is like standing on top of Mount Everest and admiring the view, only to discover it's just a superbly-painted backdrop. Even the most miraculous triumphs of aesthetics, Air imply in that playful and profound French way, are rooted in artifice, underpinned by darker motives. But does that make them any less enchanting? In this case, emphatically not

John Mulver

4 STARS

Rollingstone

Air, otherwise known as the Parisian duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel, can make vintage synthesizers, drum machines and a clunky acoustic guitar or two sound like lovely little fluffy clouds. Their latest, 10,000 Hz. Legend, is like some deranged dim sum of sound: Some of it is tasty, most of it is weird and, ultimately, you will never know what your ears are eating. "Don't Be Light" is an ethereal keyboard jig that sounds like Ennio Morricone coming down from a rave. "Radian" is a stone-cool flute jam, lush with warm gusts of organ and a gorgeous string section that sweeps overhead like angels doing a drive-by. There's a palpable sense of wistfulness to the track, a moody blues that repeatedly surfaces on 10,000 Hz. Legend then disappears again. But this vague angst is the only thread that runs through every song, and when Beck drops by and ruins "The Vagabond" with the same minstrel-show Prince impersonation he sported on Midnite Vultures, one begins to wonder if this isn't a compilation of electronic performers instead of an album by one band. At times, Air seem bent on impersonating the alternative acid-rock impersonations of Ween, whom they have professed a love for - "Wonder Milky Bitch," with its deadpan vocals, Slinky sound effects and faux-bachelor-pad ambience, sounds like a parody of Serge Gainsbourg's decadent Franco-pop. Other tracks suggest that Godin and Dunckel have gone mental with their paste-up tools and constructed the whole album with the same cut-up poetry aesthetic that produced song titles like "Sex Born Poison." It's nice that 10,000 Hz. Legend sounds very little like Air's masterworks Premier Symptomes and Moon Safari. Unfortunately, it also sounds like Air trying very hard not to be Air.

Pat Blashill

2.5 STARS

NME

There's nothing like gratuitously trashing your public image. If Air's debut album (1998's 'Moon Safari') established them as a byword for casual style-mag chic, then its successor looks like a brazen attempt to destroy that image for good. '10,000Hz Legend' is nothing like 'Moon Safari', then again it doesn't really bear a resemblance to much. Instead, it's a glowing, highly ambitious, quasi-concept album that sees Air spiralling off on a wildly idiosyncratic and brilliantly insane tangent all of their own.

In the last five years, many groups (Radiohead, Spiritualized, Super Furry Animals) have been accused of ushering in the new prog. On '10,000Hz...', Air actually do. The cover (featuring our two heroes - Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel - on the bridge of a space station in the middle of a bright red desert) offers the first clue. The last time anyone saw artwork like this, it was 1973, and Yes had just begun to terrorise the known universe with 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' - the least cool album ever made.

Still, the good news is, this may look like a Yes album, but it certainly doesn't sound like one. This being new prog, it's not all beards, 24-hour keyboard solos and wizards. No, it's more futuristic than that. Most of this LP sounds like it was constructed by androids rather than a French architect and physics teacher. The vocals are robotic, the lyrics are about "melancholy snipers" and "desire sensors" and the whole LP ends with an interstellar blast of stereo-panning space effects.

What makes '10,000Hz...' so fantastic is its sheer level of invention. All the songs here are multi-sectioned mini-symphonies crammed with furiously disparate influences. The album's outstanding track ('Don't Be Light') is the perfect case in point. It starts with angelic choirs, segues into a pulsating Krautrock groove, collapses into a fuzzed guitar solo, goes into a spoken word section and then ends in a fit of whistling.

Air do not want you to be bored. They want you to be amazed, scared and shocked, but not bored. Elsewhere then, they present shimmering harps and droning electronics ('Radian'), a song about blowjobs ('Wonder Milky Bitch'), some bad jokes (excellent single 'Radio # 1' ends with a pretend DJ singing along over the top of it) and the occasional wail of police sirens ('People In The City'). The only vaguely straight track is the one that features Beck. It must have got on by mistake.

There are some people who say that having done the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides, Air have now moved onto their most ambitious project to date: commercial suicide. Actually, though, by dint of having the courage of their convictions and tackling prog head-on, they've succeeded in making the uncool cool. Like Radiohead with 'Kid A', they've wrong-footed their legion of imitators and in the process advanced their own reputation immeasurably. It might be ideologically suspect, but it sounds just fine.

James Oldham

4.5 STARS