Courtesy of Last.fm.

One could think that the only things that would come out of Versailles are Rococo paintings, bourgeois aspirations and gruesome French Revolution memories. Nevertheless, by some chance in life, two tr̬s tr̬s beau hommes have embodied the royal and majestic element of the town in downtempo, space rock electronica.

Air has been a music landmark for French electronica since 1995, and it doesn‰’t seem like they plan on stopping their great legacy.

We‰’ve all had several encounters with Air; we‰’re just not aware of it. Not only are they Sofia Coppola‰’s favorite band to include in any of her good movie soundtracks (Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides), but also they keep producing and remixing many songs for French artists, like Charlotte Gainsbourg and Francoise Hardy.

Coming from really different backgrounds (Nicolas Godin is an architect and Jean-Benoit Dunckel a mathematician), this duo decided to form Air back in 1995, after collaborating in a previous side project named Orange. They‰’ve always had the strong influence of electronic mysticism in their music, leaving the audience with the quintessential doubt of what to expect from any new material they release: will it be pure instrumental or not?

As well, every single album they make embodies such different sounds, making them live up to their name “Air‰Û, that quite literally experiments with everything around it.

One of their oldest albums, Moon Safari, plays with more sexual sounds that include heavy basslines and delicate keyboards. “La Femme D‰’Argent‰” and “Kelly Watch the Stars‰” are both songs, which describe Air‰’s avant-garde perspective on their music: electronica and sonic superbness.

At the same time, both Talkie Walkie and Love 2 have great songs, which are obviously included in Air‰’s musical canon. However, Talkie Walkie lends itself to a mellower /“sex music‰” sound, headlined by “Universal Traveler‰Û, “Alone in Kyoto‰” and “Venus‰Û. Love 2 experiments with harsher sounds and semi-distorted synths, but they still manage to sound flawless. The pop space sounds never fail to appear in songs like “Sing Sang Sung‰” and the eternal love anthem “Heaven‰’s Light‰Û.

Sometimes I feel that any of Matisse‰’s paintings would have an Air song as their soundtrack. Le Bonheur de vivre (the joy of life) that every fauvist painter was obsessed with is expressed through Air‰’s careless sound and enchanting melodies. The electronic duo is just missing ultramarine colored skin tones and curvy female nudes surrounding them to become a walking work of visual art.