Air @ Royal Albert Hall

Around 2009 I came up with a long list of music acts I'd like to see live and Air were on that list. Then in early 2010 they played a gig in London but unfortunately I was busy doing something else that day. Later on that year they played 2 further gigs in London but again I was busy doing other things. Given they'd played 3 London gigs that year I thought I'd get plenty more opportunities to go and see them play. Little did I know it would be 14 years before I'd get the next opportunity.

Incidentally Fridays gig at the Royal Albert Hall was their 3rd one of the year in London. The first was at a much smaller venue earlier on in the year, the first I'd heard of it was the news that it sold out instantly. Then they also played at Royal Albert Hall on Thursday night. These gigs also sold out quickly but fortunately I was able to get a ticket.

I'm continuing to do gigs sober due to the rip off beer prices at these venues. A pint of beer at the Royal Albert Hall costs £7.80.

They were playing their debut full length album "Moon Safari" in full. Aside from a drummer, it was just the 2 of them on stage rotating between multiple instruments. When it came to "All I Need", no guest vocalist came out, instead they were doing minimal vocals themselves which made it better in my opinion. Similar story "You Make It Easy". 

After 50 minutes the album had been played in full but there was still plenty more of the gig to go. Not for some people though who were only seemingly interested in hearing "Moon Safari" and left once that was finished.

The bulk of the rest of the gig was tracks from the "Talkie Walkie" and "1000 Hertz Legend" albums. Both are solid albums which I own, but it was evident that "Moon Safari" is easily the best album. The only other tune they did was "High School Lover" from The Virgin Suicides soundtrack which is arguably their biggest track outside of "Moon Safari". They did a great performance of it and a few more people left once that had finished.

Overall it was a great gig and worth the 14 year wait.

Last 10 Years

Yesterdays post about Fenech-Soler brought back memories of other music I was listening to when I first discovered them. Basically I didn't think I was old enough to reach the 'better in the old days' stage of my life and made an effort to keep my music tastes current.

One thing I did was pick my 25 favourite albums. It was a very biased list favouring the more recent albums though, 17 of them were from the 21st century and the other 8 were from the 90s. It also included an album which had only just come out at the time.

Nowadays I'm at a point where I'm not even up to date with a lot of artists I've liked in years gone by. Some went to to make some truly dreadful music and others I just forgot about. I do sometimes seek out new music from an artist if I'm going to see them in concert, but many don't really bother making new music anymore and stick to the classics.

It got me thinking, what albums have the 25 artists of those albums I picked released in the last 10 years. Well here's the answer:

2 Many DJs - No albums

Norman Jay - 2 albums: Skank & Boogie (2015), Mister Good Times (2017)

Portishead - No albums

Massive Attack - No albums

High Contrast - 2 albums: Night Gallery (2017), Notes from the Underground (2020)

Plump DJs - No albums

Jacques Lu Cont - No albums

Erol Alkan - 1 album: Fabriclive 77 (2014)

Spiritcatcher - No albums

Various Artists - N/A

DJ Shadow - 2 albums: The Mountain Will Fall (2016), Our Pathetic Age (2019)

Tiga - 1 album: No Fantasy Required  (2016)

Air - No albums

Fatboy Slim - No albums

Sander Kleinenberg - No albums

Snoop Dogg - 6 albums: Bush (2015), Coolaid (2016), Neva Left (2017), Bible of Love (2018), I Wanna Thank Me (2019), From tha Streets 2 tha Suites (2021), BODR (2022)

Jurassic 5 - No albums

Kruder & Dorfmeister - 1 album: Johnson (2022)

Zero 7 - No albums

Mylo - No albums

Digitalism - 2 albums: Mirage (2016), JPEG (2019)

Underworld - 2 albums: Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future (2016), Drift Series 1 (2019)

LCD Soundsystem - 1 album: American Dream (2017)

London Elektricity - 2 albums: Are We There Yet? (2015), Building Better Worlds (2019)

Propellerheads - No albums

Just 11 of the artists have released an album in the last 10 years and only 3 of them have released one in the decade so far. Only Snoop Dogg has been prolific with none of the others managing more than 2 albums in a decade.

This leads to another question, are these albums any good?

Just one way to find out. I'm going to give each of those albums a listen and post what I think of them here.

My 25 Favourite Albums: Air - Moon Safari

In the late 90s a fair bit of French electronic music was becoming popular in the UK and Air were one of those who were making their mark. Their debut Top 40 hit was "Sexy Boy" which seemed to be everywhere at the time.

I thought it was an alright record, but didn't think it was anything special, the fact it was overplayed didn't really help. When I heard "Kelly Watch The Stars" on the other hand, I thought what a tune. Then there was "All I Need", another great tune.

If you think of these 3 tunes, "Sexy Boy" is more of a dance record, then "Kelly Watch The Stars" straddles the line between dance and chill out, then "All I Need" is a chill out tune.

This pretty much reflects the album, it's not exactly a dance album or a chill out album, but it's something in between.

Back in 2010, Air played in London 3 times and on all 3 occasions I couldn't go for one reason or another. Unfortunately they haven't played in London since then. They did a world tour a year or 2 ago and went to many countries, but not the UK, so I'm yet to see them live. Hopefully I will one day.