There are 30 degrees at the Lido di Camaiore. Perceived: impossible to define it. In the desert steppe of the South – Sun at Zenit – the Festival's press office The first summer And some journalists wanders in the backstage in search of a little shadow. Or rather, of a specific point where there is at least the chance to capture a symbolic breeze. We move in a group, all close, changing the location suddenly depending on the movement of the curtains, probable witnesses – however intangible – air strokes.
It looks like a scene of Miracle in Milan by De Sica, but on the contrary. The one in which the crowd chases, tightens and teas around to enjoy for a handful of seconds of the small rays of sun which, from time to time, manage to pierce the fog banks. In Camaiore, behind the stage de The first summerthe dynamic is very similar, but the goal is exactly the opposite. This air dance is to survive the waiting of the Air, who have just finished the soundcheck and are waiting for the printing in the dressing room. We are three journalists, and I – a little for circumstances, a little for cowardice – I have no problem saying that I will have last. They receive us one at a time in the dressing room. The others await outside.
It will be the period of the year, it will be that my cousin is giving maturity, but school anxiety rises to me. I wait for out of scrutinizing the faces of the colleagues who come out of the interviews, trying to capture the mood of the commission as I review the notes that I pinned for the interview. Then I remember that unlike the oral exam of the state exam, today I ask the questions, and I go on.
I take my turn, I enter the dressing room and suddenly my only real concern becomes the overhang of temperature, and the impact of the air conditioning that will inevitably lead me, tomorrow, to wake up with the sore throat. I say to Nicolas Godin who always forgets on the train and on the plane to bring me a scarf of health. From today, even in the dressing rooms. The Air, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Duncken, sit quiet and impassive. On the table there is fruit and a bottle of Martini (closed). They seem relaxed, tonight their world tour arrives at Lido di Camaiore, the only Italian stage of the French duo in 2025, in the unstoppable celebration of the 25 years (now 27) of Moon Safari.
“Moon Safari It is an album that has always played better for me in the studio than live. And I keep thinking about it today. Yet we are here ”, attacks Nicolas.“ I am one Studio personeven just the idea of playing live that album made me panic: I have always been aware that reporting Moon Safari With the same technical precision to a concert it was impossible. ” I am amazed by the rigidity and level of self-criticism that he uses, he even speaks of degradation. “I took a lot of years to overcome this problem. I had the impostor syndrome. I didn't understand how people could appreciate what we were doing on stage. I had to work a lot on myself for this reason. Then I understood that Moon Safari It is a time machine, and when I play it live brings so much joy and pleasure to people, and to ourselves, that I learned to let me go. It is an album that transports to a magical era. And there we understood that – even if it didn't play Exactly Like the album – we could play it everywhere and forever. ” Jean-Benoît confirms, and raid the dose. Technology also helped the live yield of the disc. After frustrating tours we found a sound that satisfies us. And we started to appreciate the concert as an overall product: the lights, the visuals, the art there, in front of the eyes of the public. I believe that Moon Safari you were waiting for 2025 to be brought to the stage properly “.
The magical era of Moon Safari It is extremely linked to the childhood of the duo of Versailles, a universe that varies from Jules Verne to the Barbapapà. “Ah, are the Barbapapà also in Italy? You know that Ce Matin there Is it a tribute to the Barbapapà? ” I smile thinking of Paolo Sorrentino who chooses the same track – the one dedicated to the Barbapapa – among the songs of the soundtrack of The extra man. “Now he is curious. Starting from our imagination, so specific, Moon Safari It is completely out of our control ”. In April, Vegyn's remix. Yesterday, the premiere in Lafayette Previews in Paris of the docufilm Blue Moon Safari British director Joshua Gordon. “We are not worried. It is not an evolution. They are simply other corners, other points of view on our work, which remains stamped. These spin-off have a very dystopian flavor for me,” explains Nicolas. “How would our same album play if we had been English, and we had produced it there? It is like feeling the version of ourselves in a parallel universe, if our musical ideas had been transported by a spaceship in a world, in a totally different context.” Jean-Benoît concludes: “Moon Safari It is out of our control, it's true. But all that derives from there are new, different things. There is a different spirit. It is interesting to see how someone else can decline that specific mood in something totally different. But it's another stuff. The identity of our work remains intact and eternal. ”
Start hot in the dressing room, they ask me if I know a free beach in the stage area. I don't know, embarrassed and guilty to get out of the impasse I find myself talking about Italian common places, and we end up discussing Caciucco, Ennio Morricone and Baricco. “When we were children, we watched a lot of television. And every time they broadcast a movie, also French films, half the time the soundtrack was from Morricone. All those films with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Lino Ventura. In all that French cinema there was Morricone's hand. I remember clearly when I went to see The good, the ugly, the bad at the cinema”, Nicolas specifies. “The music was so overwhelming, so sexy, who changed my life. Forever. For me Morricone is a genius, it is like a God. He influenced us terribly. But we never met him. But maybe it's better this way. There was a referential fear, and in any case it seemed like a little guy grumpy“.” I don't feel like contradicting, with maximum respect for Morricone.
Those who encountered Alessandro Baricco, with whom they recorded a tea music, the album in 2003 City Reading. “After twenty years I still don't understand why it came to us. We had the right bed Twentieth century, Like everyone, but we had no idea who it was. But we liked it, there was a nice energy right away. His voice, his stamp, was perfect: a single take and was done. We also brought him live together with the Valle Theater “Remember Jean-Benoît.” We discovered Rome thanks to that project, it was incredible, a new experience. Then it ended and we no longer did anything like this. You know, we don't like to repeat ourselves. We use Air as a small spacecraft for explore Literature, cinema, advertising, television. Every time a different field opened and there was music, we said: “Let's try, so we can discover a new world”.
Tonight the Air spacecraft enters orbit Versilia. He still and stationed for one night at the Lido di Camaiore. We stock our belts and challenge gravity.
