Air’s 10 000 Hz Legend - where OK Computer met Discovery

Plus Frente Abierto, Sofia Kourtesis, Simo Cell and more

Water works in Foixà

Something distinctly proggy was in the Paris waters as 1999 became 2000 and a new Millennium roved into anxious view. For Daft Punk, then squirrelled away working intensely on their second album, this influence came across loud, clear and widdly on Discovery, a record that nodded to Pink Floyd, Supertramp and ELO alongside house and disco and which featured a number of artily ornate and incredibly fiddly guitar solos, indebted to both van Halen and prog rock.

For Air, aka Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, at the time the second biggest group in the French Touch, prog raised its medieval-adventures-on-ice-sized head on their truly bizarre second album 10 000 Hz Legend, released just three months after Discovery in May 2001. While both groups’ debut albums - Homework and Moon Safari, respectively - had been rapturously received, Discovery and 10 000 Hz Legend were met with the scratching of heads and not inconsiderable rejection.

Prog guitars and post-millennial studio trickery weren’t really what anyone expected from these two fashionably French acts and the critics let us know it. “Too much here whiffs of fame-fuelled indulgence and Rick Wakeman,” The Guardian thundered of 10 000 Hz Legend. “Prog and disco have never openly begged for their own hybrid but the genres’ newborn Frankenbaby is alive, whether we like it or not,” Pitchfork opined of Discovery.

The following years would see the charms of Discovery radically re-appraised, with the album now largely seen as both Daft Punk’s best and one of the greatest albums of the early 21st Century, hugely influential in its scope. 10 000 Hz Legend, on the other hand, has proved stubbornly un-redeemable. While Air swan around the world bringing Moon Safari to adoring audiences, 10 000 Hz Legend is the ugly brother best locked up in the closet.

OK so there was a 20th anniversary edition of 10 000 Hz Legend released in 2021, with the More Hertz bonus disc. But only two songs from the album - Don't Be Light and How Does It Make You Feel - were included on the band’s 2016 greatest hits, compared to five apiece from Moon Safari and Talkie Walkie. More realistic is the taste test: when was the last time you heard anyone talking about 10 000 Hz Legend, let alone singing its praises?

This is a crying shame because 10 000 Hz Legend is a flawed masterpiece, the meeting point between OK Computer and Discovery, and Air’s most adventurous album by a mile. Personally, I never thought of Air as hotel lobby chill merchants - they were always too weird, too emotionally bereft for that. But 10 000 Hz Legend, with its bizarro prog ramblings, in-jokes and dark, harsh edges, should have been the album to definitively dispel this myth among the general public.

That it didn’t is a sign that people really didn’t want post-Millennial angst from the French duo, however beautifully it was dressed up; and this might explain the muted reaction to the band’s second album. I don’t think Air were necessarily trying to trash their comfy image on 10 000 Hz - but they didn’t seem particularly concerned about maintaining it either.

I listened to 10 000 Hz Legend a lot when it was released in spring 2001, when it sat alongside Discovery, Broadcast’s The Noise Made By People and the Radiohead duo of Kid A and Amnesiac in my habits. The record fit beautifully in such company, imbued with the prog spirit of Discovery, the melancholic feel of The Noise Made By People and the experimental, slightly restless angst of the two Radiohead records.

It was a strange, disconnected time for me, living in Madrid but knowing I would soon be returning to the UK, so there wasn’t that much point in getting to know people. Madrid was full of life but I was too tired to pay attention after working 13-hour days in the name of teaching English. 10 000 Hz Legend seemed to connect with this state; not one thing, nor the other, slightly disconnected from the mainstream and in its own very particular world.

In 2025, “Prog” is no longer a dirty work, thanks to the work of The Mars Volta, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Radiohead themselves. Kosmische, which 10 000 Hz Legend also touches, is very much alive too, thanks to Stereolab, Beak> et al.

10 000 Hz, then, sounds more akin to 2025 than it did to 2011. More importantly, the record feels very much like the modern world. 10 000 Hz Legend is both self referential and very aware of its place in the world - and at the same time fundamentally lost, like a teenager washed out on social media and at the end of their tether.

This feeling of disconnect comes right from the start. Electronic Performers, the lumbering progressive rock beast that opens 10 000 Hz Legend in a flurry of ascorbic guitars and rippling drum machines, is, on the face of it, about Air themselves: “We are electronic performers,” a solemn, slightly deformed voice proclaims, as if caught in a funhouse mirror. “We need to use envelope filters / To say how we feel.”

But the song’s downbeat tone of mournful piano and soaring strings makes it feel to the listener as if being in Air is like serving a particularly grim prison sentence, an impression that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the group’s bizarrely somber tour documentary Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing. Could it be that being in a popular touring group in the late 90s, with its incessant demands and routine stress, isn’t actually all that fun? That’s not necessarily something fans want to hear - but when expressed as beautifully as it is on Electronic Performers we will give it a pass.

And what happens if the problem of being in Air is actually Air themselves? This, it feels, is the subtext of Electronic Performers, a song about a band acknowledging their own inadequacies. Because if a band need to use envelope filters to say how they feel, that’s not really a sign of good, healthy communication. We’re one song into 10 000 Hz and already serious self doubt has crept in.

Maybe How Does It Make You Feel, song two, can sort this out? This is one of the most beautiful songs in the Air catalogue, after all, combining exquisite acoustic guitar chords and a strolling drum beat with a gorgeous wordless backing vocal that sweeps the listener into the song’s chorus.

How Does It Make You Feel is a love song. But one undercut by a torrent doubt - perhaps a love song to someone Air had to leave behind during the group’s interminable Moon Safari tours, as nagging doubts start to worm their way into the relationship. And so the song’s opening line “I am feeling very warm right now” is immediately undermined by “Please, don't disappear”.

Elsewhere, the vocal proclaims: “You're telling me that we live too far to love each other / But our love can stretch farther than the eye can see” which seems far too perfectly judged a line - one that will resonate with anyone who has lived a long-distance relationship - to come from anywhere other than real life. And it is desperately sad to hear, as if the protagonist needs to convince themselves of the song’s impossible demands. Adding to the slightly desperate edge is the fact that the song’s verses are intoned in the same unnerving robotic voice that Radiohead used on OK Computer’s Fitter Happier, like a computer singing its electronic blues.

Again, though, 10 000 Hz Legend’s self-referential feel emerges. The song’s protagonist suggests they ”have an extended play together” - the record collector’s dream! - and the song ends with a sardonic retort from another robotic voice - female this time: "Well, I really think you should quit smoking.” And so the desperate romance of this beautiful work is reduced to some kind of smoker’s dream.

It’s desolating… but also kind of funny, a bizarre mixture of feelings that continues into the next track. Radio #One is a slightly wobbly glam rock boogie with a total ear-worm chorus that, again, appears to address Air’s reality as commercial music makers with an not-entirely satisfied edge.

Radio #One is a perfectly weighted pop song and - theoretically - by making mention of the radio, Air have transformed their work into just the kind of thing that radio programmers around the world will welcome to the airwaves. Because what could be better on the radio than a song about the radio? Except, no, that won’t be happening because to their already meta song about being on the radio, Air add a meta-meta faux DJ voice singing along all over the final chorus to Radio #One, thus ensuring that no self-respecting DJ will ever play it on the radio. Check and check mate.

How about The Vagabond, a collaboration Beck, then one of the world’s biggest alternative stars and by some distance the most famous artist that Air had worked with? That, surely, will cut through commercially? Except, well, perhaps not, if what you end up with (d)evolves into a descending swirl of Gothic doom mid way through that tears the rug from under Beck’s natural congeniality, his voice being sent through the robotic mangle as he tries to pull off his Prince-ly Midnight Vultures-isms.

A similar thing happens on Sex Born Poison, three songs later, when the gorgeously wan vocals of suGar Yoshinaga and Yumiko Ohno from Buffalo Daughter are assaulted by some genuinely nasty sounding percussive effects, which sound like they are being played on cheap video games units.

It’s not my intention to go through 10 000 Hz Legend song by song. But this opening run of tracks shows what a remarkable album 10 000 Hz Legend is - and how it differs from Air’s debut. Some of the sonic textures are the same as on Moon Safari - notably the acoustic guitars, sonorous bass and touches of retro synths. And Radian could, perhaps, have fit on the band’s debut album, with its swirling harps and La Femme d’argent-style drum and bass wander. But, on the whole, 10 000 Hz Legend is a far more jagged sounding record, sharp elbows and corners to Moon Safari’s contented edges.

Lucky and Unhappy, for example, starts with a very strident, almost military synth tone, before the familiar acoustic guitar comes in; People In the City feels happy enough for its first three minutes, only for a vast, ugly synth riff, more akin to drum & bass than chilled-out electronica to interrupt proceedings, at which point Air also release the sounds of the city - the sirens, traffic and stress - in a psychedelic collage. The wonderful Motorik pulse of Don’t Be Light, meanwhile, has both fuzzed up guitar tone and an eerie string rush that brings to mind the gradually unfurling horrors of The Shining.

Even the one bad song is interesting: the appallingly named and rather tuneless Wonder Milky Bitch is an utterly bizarre country and western type stroll laden with inappropriate twanging noises and a chorus that sounds like it is disappearing into the bowels of the earth, even as you contemplate it. (That said, The Guardian’s description of the song as “the Trumpton theme played by Yes” sounds like something I would definitely listen to.)

The album’s mood, too, is far more downbeat than their debut. Moon Safari could be a little melancholic - on songs like All I Need or You Make It Easy - but it was a kind of comfy melancholy, like watching a romantic film in front of a warm fire. 10 000 Hz Legend evokes more of an uncomfortable - and rather more real - sadness. With Moon Safari, you knew everything would be alright in the end: boy would meet girl; girl would meet boy and happily ever after, as cultural logic demands. But everything on 10 000 Hz Legend feels uncertain and on edge; nothing really resolves, with the band often showing the hand behind their moves.

Perhaps this uneasiness is most evident through the uses of the human voice on 10 000 Hz Legend. Air may have used the talk box and vocoder to treat their voices on Moon Safari songs like Sexy Boy but the result was, on the whole, warm and welcome, vaguely robotic but shot through with human emotion. All I Need and You Make It Easy, meanwhile, used Beth Hirsch’s crystalline vocal tone basically untreated.

On 10 000 Hz Legend, Air use vocal effects to distort and disturb, from the pitched way-down-in-the-dumps solo vocal of Electronic Performers to the disaffected computer on How Does It Make You Feel. Perhaps the best examples of this, though, is the chorus on People In The City, where the vocal seems to corrupt and degrade before your very ears, hooky but disturbing.

A criticism that is often levelled at prog rock is that it is pretentious and self indulgent. Which 10 000 Hz Legend very much is - but not in a bad way. Air’s second album pushes for a kind of musical depth and braininess that goes above and beyond the band’s debut, with the duo of Godin and Dunckel essentially indulging their every whim.

A song like Radian reminds you that they probably could have recreated the smooth emotional surfaces of Moon Safari - and album I love, by the way - on 10 000 Hz Legend and in fact they returned to this unwrinkled territory on their third album, Talkie Walkie. But that simply wasn’t their way. Moon Safari had earned Air the right to experiment on their second album and they were always going to take it.

And, yes, some of these experiments - like Wonder Milky Bitch and the slightly underwhelming if very prog album closer Caramel Prisoner (the Japanese bonus track The Way You Look Tonight doesn’t count) - didn’t quite come off. But these weren’t just experiments for the sake of it, born out of a sense of mindless adventure; Air’s experiments in timbre and tone on 10 000 Hz Legend served to amplify the delicate, dark emotional states of the songs on the group’s second album, much like Radiohead did on OK Computer.

10 000 Hz Legend isn’t the album you put on as your daily soundtrack to life, like Moon Safari once was; it’s not the record for the dinner party, polite cocktail and business presentation; in fact, you might not even listen to it that much. But it’s more important than that: 10 000 Hz Legend is a break-glass-in-emergency-type record, the kind of album you may desperately need some day, when nothing else will do. 10 000 Hz is self indulgent, then; but very very necessary.

Some listening

Frente Abierto, Israel Fernández and Lela Soto - Parece Que Te Voy Viendo

Doom flamenco? Why the hell not? It’s a combination that you might think doesn’t make much sense. But drama and intense feelings lie at the heart of both types of music and Parece Que Te Voy Viendo, by Andalusian collective Frente Abierto and singers Israel Fernández and Lela Soto, shows an admirable kinship, as sludgy electric guitar riffs gradually wind their way around Fernández and Soto’s impassioned twin vocals, like two gnarled roots. Their concert at Primavera Sound was, apparently, fantastic.

James Holden / Wacław Zimpel - The Universe Will Take Care of You

There probably weren’t many listeners who thought that James Holden’s last album, Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities, was a bit too stiff-backed for their tastes. But, for those who did - and for anyone who appreciates electronic music with scope, vision and wild edges - Holden is back with regular live collaborator Wacław Zimpel for the comfortingly named The Universe Will Take Care Of You.

The universe, sadly, doesn’t give a toss about you, me or anyone. BUT you can almost believe in cosmic coincidences when faced with an album this freeing, as the title track reveals, a slowly unspooling mixture of jazzy live instrumentation and electronic smudges that clambers right to the edges of the brain and stays there, pinging synapses in illogical ways.

Sofia Kourtesis - Canela Pura

Take a soupçon of French house filters, add some Latin house vibes and a whole spice rack of pure pop hooks (enough of the cookery comparisons? OK) and you have Sofia Kourtesis’ Canela Pura, a song that sounds destined to rule summer 2025 and yet STILL not piss you off when you hear it on a rainy day in November. if I was Sofia, I would have my Ibiza villa booked RIGHT NOW.

Guerrilla Toss - Red Flag to Angry Bull

… or is it, instead, the summer of ROCK? What with Water From Your Eyes’ incredible forthcoming album and now this, from New York experimental rock titans Guerrilla Toss, a band I fell hard for on their 2022 album Famously Alive. On Red Flag to Angry Bull, a song that features - bizarrely, both Stephen Malkmus and Phish’s Trey Anastasio - the band swagger through a blend of rock music that feels both classic rock and kind of messed up, anthemic and weird.

Simo Cell - Oh No!

Oh No!, taken from Simo Cell’s excellent new French-Touch 2025 EP FL Louis, is less response track to Daft Punk’s classic Oh Yeah as Oh Yeah’s monstrous younger brother, who has been kept unfed and unwatered under the stairs in the hope he will croak, but just broke out and is running menacingly around the house. And who wouldn’t want to hear that? More practically, the beat is absolutely sick.

Nikki Nair - Somebody (feat. yuné pinku)

Nikki Nair’s surprise-released new EP Violence is the Answer keeps up the Atlanta producer’s admirable run of doing whatever the hell he feels like, comprising six kind-of pop songs that whizz by in 20 minutes of tax-return chat and day-glo synth arpeggios.

Somebody, with yuné pinku, reminds me at times of classic electro, an overblown piano ballad, a Todd Edwards cut up, surging trance and, ultimately, a nu 2-step banger, which is bizarre mixture that the two artists have the admirable flair to keep together. Sometimes confusing fun is the best kind of fun.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise - Kelly Lee Owens at Primavera Sound 2025

There are going to be a lot of Line Noises recorded live at Primavera 20205 coming soon, after a very busy festival time. Expect one a week, every Monday, for the next two months or so. First up is Kelly Lee Owens, who dropped by for some dream state / pop music / synth spotting with Depeche Mode / death bed music chat.

The playlists

Summer heat is definitely here in Barcelona and I have had a huge deadline hanging over my head. And yet I have still managed, nonetheless, to update my two playlists: The newest and bestest 2025; and The newest and the bestest. Do follow them before my brain melts and it is all Cyndi Lauper hereon in.