Nicolas Godin Is Uncertain Air Will Make More Music - Unless It's Good

Air's Nicolas Godin feels like he "grew up in the 18th century". Raised in Versailles, with an architect father, the city's royal history spoke to him. "My main, main, main inspiration is the park of the Palace of Versailles," says the 47-year-old. "It's a huge park, designed by Le Notre, it's the dream of the Sun King [Louis XIV]. It's like being in Alice In Wonderland. If you walk into that park with headphones on and play an Air record, it will be like a soundtrack to that walk. When I was a child, I grew up there, in this dreamlike world. We had a whole group of kids, and that's where we used to hang out. First, we used to play there. Then I'd ride my bike there. My first date with a girl was there. I'd study architecture at the college there. Me and my friends would skip school and go smoke pot there. All of my first experiences were there."

"It's like being in Alice In Wonderland. If you walk into that park with headphones on and play an Air record, it will be like a soundtrack to that walk."

This group of friends — which included future Air partner Jean-Benoit Dunckel and soon-to-be seminal French house figures Alex Gopher and Etienne de Crecy — also made music together. "We were the first ones to do that; nobody ever had before in Versailles," Godin recalls. "In England, when you're 16, everyone starts a band. But we didn't have that, no one had come before us."

Coming from a town with no rock'n'roll culture — and having spent his childhood studying classical piano — all Godin's early influences were cinema composers: Ennio Morricone, Michel Legrand, John Barry, Nino Rota. After hearing Portishead, he saw a "window" in which his idea of making "cinematic" music could work. Air's debut LP, 1998's Moon Safari, was an unexpected breakout; going platinum in the UK and leading the duo to tour the world. "I never thought we were making commercial music, that we could have this big career," Godin admits. "Our music was very long, very slow, very spacious, the records were like these grand structures. It was such a surprise to me that we had this success."

Air never quite lived up to their debut; releasing soundtracks both real (2000's The Virgin Suicides), imagined (2012's Le Voyage Dans La Lune), and ambient-background (2014's Music For Museum). Eight years from their last 'pop' record, 2009's Love 2, Godin is unsure they'll make another album. "I don't want to be another of these bands that just makes records because that's what we do," he says. "If we're going to make a record with Air, we need to have a great idea, and we need to make it amazing."

Recent career-spanning compile Twentyears — assembling which Godin says was "torture" — showed the impressive history any Air LP would have to live up to. "I always wanted to do something that was timeless," offers Godin. "I wanted to make a classic record, a masterpiece. That was my dream since I was a child. I was really ambitious in my mind, you know? And, looking back, over everything we've made, that felt good, because none of it sounds dated."