ARTIST: VA
TITLE: LateNightTales: Air
LABEL: Azuli
GENRE: Electronic
BITRATE: 186kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 1h 03min total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-09-11
RIP DATE: 2006-09-11

Track List

01. The Cure - All Cats Are Grey    5:10
02. Black Sabbath - Planet Caravan  4:19
03. Nino Rota - O' Venezia Venaga   3:40
Venusia
04. The Band - I Shall Be Released  3:09
05. George Delerue - Camille        2:30
06. Japan - Ghosts                  4:09
07. Scott Walker - The Old Man's    3:38
Back Again
08. Jeff Alexander - Come Wander    2:56
With Me
09. Minnie Ripperton - Loving You   3:59
10. Cat Power - Metal Heart         3:39
11. Tan Dun - For The World         4:13
12. Sebastien Tellier - Le Long De  2:46
La Riviere Tendre
13. Lee Hazlewood - My Autumn's     4:05
Done Gone
14. Robert Wyatt - P.L.A.           2:24
15. Elliot Smith - Let's Get Lost   2:25
16. The Troggs - Cousin Jane        2:24
17. Air & Alessandro Baricco -      3:04
Musica
18. The Cleveland Orchestra -       4:57
Ravel: Pavane Pour Une Infante
Defunte

Release Notes:

The promo release had voiceovers.  Enjoy the retail!

Although Parisian duo Air might get a lot of stick from the critical elite,
probably due to their mainstream success, I must say I’ve never given up hope.
Okay so ‘Talkie Walkie’ was a bit difficult to stomach, but I could see why they
did it – and coming after a quite remarkable and genre-defining soundtrack to
Sofia Coppola’s movie masterpiece ‘The Virgin Suicides’ I don’t think we can
begrudge them anything. Here the two musicians show how much they actually care
about music by letting us thumb through their vinyl and find out what makes up
their midnight listening. It was always obvious they had a decent collection –
how else would they manage to so effortlessly bound between lounge, electro-pop,
indie, progressive rock and haunting exotica, and this extensive, knowledgeable
compilation only serves to confirm my suspicions. Just for starters, the
compilation (and let me say now I am one of the most cynical compilation
listeners out there!) begins with one of The Cure’s finest ever moments ‘All
Cats are Grey’. It’s not even that this is just a great track, but it’s the sort
of track that only a real fan would have ever picked out, it’s not a brash,
outgoing party tune – this is one of the moments that you assume only you know
about and it serves as the perfect representation of what Nicolas Godin and
Jean-Benoit Dunckel have achieved on this quite heart-stopping anthology. Then
we have Black Sabbath – yes, Brummie rock God Ozzy Osbourne’s band, with ‘Planet
Caravan’, one of the bands spacier most out-there moments (you might know the
Pantera version too…) and here we can lie back and enjoy it in a totally
different context. And this is the other secret to the compilation, tracks taken
out of their regular environment and re-aligned as if they were supposed to be
there all the time. There’s nothing worse than a compilation which sounds hacked
together, a compilation which sounds lazy or opportunist – the two Frenchmen
have here collected tunes that they quite clearly deeply love and most
importantly tunes that fit together seamlessly to create an unparalleled
late-night listening experience. Further on we are treated to the orchestral
subtlety of George Delerue, David Sylvian’s unique tones on Japan’s classic
‘Ghosts’, Jeff Alexander’s utterly heart-stopping ‘Come Wander With Me’ (which
you might remember from Vincent Gallo’s ‘Brown Bunny’ OST), Cat Power’s
mysteriously beautiful ‘Metal Heart’ and Elliot Smith’s much misunderstood
‘Let’s Get Lost’. I could go on because frankly every track on here is perfectly
placed, perfectly picked and a pleasure to listen to – really if you buy one
compilation this year, then you need to buy this. It is not only the perfect
representation of Air’s far-reaching influence but a quite jaw dropping
collection of melancholy, unpretentious classics. Utterly essential.