Air's Soundtrack For Georges Méliès 'A Trip To The Moon' Getting A Release

News

by Kevin Jagernauth
November 21, 2011 5:25 PM
2 Comments

The Band Also Score New Short Film For Cartier

Air are no stranger to composing music for films. The French electronic duo came to prominence stateside thanks to the work for Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides," and the director's subsequent films "Lost In Translation" and "Marie Antoinette" also prominently featured tunes by the band (notably "Alone In Kyoto" and "Il Secondo Giorno"). The duo have also wrote the music for and produced Charlotte Gainsbourg's second album, 5:55. It has been a couple of years since the band's last studio effort, the somewhat middling Love 2, but they have spent this past year tuning up one of cinema's great silent classics and we'll get to hear the result soon.

This past spring, at the Cannes Film Festival, a newly restored version of Georges Méliès' (played by Ben Kingsley in Martin Scorsese's "Hugo," fyi) 1902 film "A Trip To The Moon" opened the festivities, complete with a new score by Air. Now that work is coming to some earbuds near you. AstralWerks will release the score -- now expanded into an album's worth of songs -- February 7th, and it's slightly different than what we might be used to from the band.

" 'A Trip to the Moon' is undoubtedly more organic than most of our past projects. We wanted it to sound 'handmade,' knocked together’, a bit like Méliès' special effects. Everything is played live…like Méliès' film, our soundtrack is nourished by living art," Nicolas Godin said in a statement. The disc also features guest spots from Au Revoir Simone and Beach House member Victoria Legrand, but that's not all the Gallic duo have been up to.

Air have also recently scored a new short film for the luxury jewelers Cartier for their campaign, "How Far Would You Go For Love." You can check out the tracklist for the album, and an excerpt from "A Trip To The Moon" and the Cartier short below (directed by Waverly Films, who've done videos for LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, TV On The Radio and more). [Prefix/CMU]

"Air" Le Voyage Dans La Lune Tracklisting"

1. Astronomic Club
2. Seven Stars
3. Retour sur terre
4. Parade
5. Moon Fever
6. Sonic Armada
7. Who Am I Know?
8. Décollage
9. Cosmic Trip
10. Homme lune
11. Lava

News

More: Air

2 Comments

| Reply
MDL | November 21, 2011 8:16 PMReply

Agreed the Air score was inappropriate on many levels. If anything it just sounded rather bad. I don't really understand why they were asked to do the score in the first place. That said, I like Air but I like a lot of musicians that I would not want to have score a silent film.
Scott Nye | November 21, 2011 6:08 PMReply

Loved A Trip to the Moon and was in awe of the color restoration, but boy that score just did not fit. I have a bit of a prejudice against modern-sounding scores for silent films, but I can't imagine how anyone really thought this was a reasonable tribute to MÃ©liÃ¨s or his film.

But again, if anyone has the opportunity to see the restoration, it's really stunning, and well worth putting up with the score.