AIR II - TRAVELLING WITHOUT MOVING

Air 2 continues the dramatic electronic beauty of Air. It's a textured album of slowly brooding music, experimental but not for the sake of it, ambient but not without the melody or repetition that our needy ears and mind crave for.

All tracks are named Travelling Without Moving, split in 11 very distinguishable parts. Part 1 is very minimal, just like on the previous Air album, Namlook didn't choose the easiest or most catchy piece to start with. It's 11 minutes of cosmic weirdness with a slow pulse and scary voice effects that are clearly influenced by the modernistic composer Ligeti (2001 Space Odyssey). After 12 minutes of dense electronic music, Part 2 offers the soothing delicacy of harmony and melody, it's still sparse and secluded but it clearly takes in Arabian themes and rhythms. Part 3 couldn't announce the Arabian influences more clearly. It's as if we're suddenly in the middle of Gabriel's album Passion, chilling plaintive vocal samples, world beats and snake-charming flutes, all presented in a spooky ambient context that takes over again in Part 4. It leads into the first track (Part 5) with dominating sequencers.

By combining the pure and spontaneous nature of Schulze's music with Tangerine Dream's catchiness, Namlook comes very close to the best work of Jean-Michel Jarre, but he goes deeper and reaches further into your soul then the catchy but slightly superfluous charm of Oxygène. Part 5 is one of the most captivating electronic pieces in my collection. Part 6 and Part 7 are both scary and playful, the sound of a musical box gone berserk in a ruined post-human landscape. Part 8 is a dark and percussive piece with a slightly gothic ambience and didgeredoo samples. Dead Can Dance goes club.

The true masterpiece of this album would be Part 9, a stunning composition around a sampled Arabian theme on lute, it's one of the saddest and most gripping pieces of funeral music I've ever heard, featuring gorgeous big moog and mellotron moments. This piece could go on for an hour as far as I'm concerned. Part 10 continues with processed samples of reverbed nature noises. The closing Part 11 is a gentle ambient techno piece, a bit like Kraftwerk meats Tangerine Dream.

Slow, dense and subtle, this music will demand your patience and attention. The reward is compelling and essential electronic music.