Air, 10,000Hz legend
That’s unusual;, that I can hear two albums by the same artist in the one day. Rain and a shower before getting ready for the big night out put me in a sitting still and listening mode. This is heavier, darker already. At the time I think this was said to be a more techno-type album, as opposed to the candyfloss and lounge fudge of Moon Safari.

The lyrics I’m hearing can’t be real…I want to bash my soul on your brain, put hands on both your heartbeats…I think I’m hearing it wrong, I hope I’m not. That bloody C64 robot voice got everywhere didn’t it? Radiohead, Air, 2 many DJs…I’m sure it was used in other places. It sounds hoarse and desperate here, although whether that’s the pleading text and angelic choir behind I don’t know. God, this is gorgeous. Rather wish the female robot voice hadn’t chided about giving up smoking at the end, made the whole lovely song into a cheap joke.

There’s something a bit glam rock about this, what is it, the harmonies? The sense that you’re in some kind of opera? Now a complaint about the politics of Radio One. This is a very different Air from that of Moon Safari. You become slightly more aware of their personalities in this (I say “they”, not even knowing the names of the two musicians), whether this has anything to do with the fact that Moon Safari was their first album (was it?) and we’ve gotten more used to the notion of Air-as-a-group, or if they seem to be singing more on this. Voices and singing denote personality in a way that instrumental music doesn’t. Is this part of the rise of popular culture and celebrity/? I’m pretty damn sure that in terms of distribution and audience, vocal music now wildly outnumbers that of instrumental, is that really the case or is it how I perceive it? And what about sampled voices? Is it still vocal music? Does presence of voice alone denote “vocal”? This is part of my idea for an eventual postgraduate study in music, about the relationship between “live” and “recorded” and the cultural currency and value awarded to both. Talking Heads interrogated the listener of Stop Making Sense (and also the reader, the record cover screams as much text as the average magazine) “Why a live album?” How can an album of plastic, shiny or otherwise, held in mortal hands or stacked in rows in shelves be “live” like a spider or a baby? Lots more to play with, but back to vocal music - am I using filters of the West in terms of amount recorded vs. amount given for free in fields, backyards, huts and riverbanks? A recording studio or a mother’s arms? What are the statistics here? At what point did the scales tip? I’ve heard that Mozart and Purcell in particular were the equivalents of Elton John or Neil Young in their time, did people listen to The Marriage of Figaro in the same way I can listen to My life in the bush of ghosts?

The album ends twitchy and foreboding. I need to eat soup.