Air - "Run"
Air - "Alone in Kyoto"

Two songs from the new-and-as-yet-unreleased album by Air (or, as they're known on my sister's Felicity soundtrack, 'Air French Band'). It's called Talkie Walkie, which is either a Serge Gainsbourg reference, a slightly kooky deconstruction, complete gibberish, or simply the way that they say 'walkie-talkie' over in France.

"Alone in Kyoto" appeared on the Lost in Translation soundtrack too, but it's good enough to be shared again. Acoustic guitar like slow-mo cherry-blossoms, airy beeps out of a fantasy airport. "Run" definitely suggests that Air - like me - has been listening to the title track on Kid A. It's peculiar but appealing, slightly dark but still with enough fluffiness to take it airborne. Most of Talkie Walkie is like this - it's almost goth in bits, certainly more sinister than 10,000 Hz Legend) - but it's also essentially a return to the gentle and beautiful lappop that made Moon Safari so nice. In short, the album sounds very Air (though I hear a lot of Cornelius as well).

It's too early yet to say whether this is a great album, but it's certainly at least as good as Moon Safari. For a genre that I thought had basically run itself dry, Talkie Walkie there's still somewhere to go. (Contrast Goldfrapp, who have singlehandedly (well, I guess with the help of Morcheeba,) decimated any faith I had left in trip-hop.)