"For the first time in years, I'm at peace with 'Moon Safari'": Vegyn & Air's Nicolas Godin In Conversation

If less is more, then French duo Air are living in abundance. Perennially popular with fans of downtempo and dream pop, bandmates Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel – known as JB by friends and collaborators – have long taken the simplistic approach to production, right back to their very debut. On ‘Moon Safari’, their seminal breakout record which has stood the test of time since its 1998 release and become one of the most celebrated albums in the history of downtempo, Air flex their muscles as seasoned producers who need no more than a few pieces of equipment to make a masterpiece. But despite ‘Moon Safari’’s lasting success, Air have only recently come to terms with the magnitude of that album after years of feeling like imposters.

More than 25 years after its release, Air have now handed over the reins – or, in other words, the stems – of ‘Moon Safari’ to someone outside of their world, with the hopes of breathing new, fresh life into a classic. As a lifelong fan of the duo’s work, Vegyn (AKA Joe Winger Thornalley) was surprised to receive word that Air were looking for a producer to work on a redux of ‘Moon Safari’, and that he was top of the list. “It was an obvious choice,” smiles Nicolas Godin. “‘Moon Safari’ is our baby, and of course we wanted someone talented to take it on, but we also wanted someone that we felt good with,” he explains. “It really came down to our musical taste, but we also wanted someone young with a vision of what music is now.”

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Taking its name from the phenomenon and “rare occurrence” of a blue moon, as well as the “emotional” blue tint of this record, 'Blue Moon Safari’ challenges many of the record’s original ideas – there’s programmed drums and breakbeats across almost every track, isolated vocals that are added in and taken away unpredictably, and there’s new elements at play that take the familiar feeling of ‘Moon Safari’ into new territory. Described by Vegyn as having a “witching hour quality to it” that sounds like a “3:AM hallucinatory dream”, or as if you were attempting to remember the original album after "suffering some sort of serious head trauma”, ‘Blue Moon Safari’ reimagines Air’s debut in a modern love letter to downtempo music.

We sat down with Vegyn and one half of Air, Nicolas Godin, to discuss the process of reworking a classic album. They spoke about battling imposter syndrome, knowing when to hang up the guitar, and finding peace as a perfectionist. Check it out below.

How are you feeling about the release of ‘Blue Moon Safari’?

Nicolas Godin (Air): I'm happy people can finally hear this new music, because it’s been a while. When did you finish making the album?

Vegyn: Maybe towards the end of 2023…

Nicolas Godin (Air): Oh my god! So, yeah, people will finally get a chance to listen to it, and the cool thing is that these two albums, both the original and Vegyn’s new version, don't age. They can be released at any point because they’re so timeless.

Vegyn: That’s very kind!

2023 was a good time to complete the project since it was ‘Moon Safari’’s 25th anniversary. Why did you decide to rework it?

Nicolas Godin (Air): When we were recording ‘Moon Safari’, there was this rework of Massive Attack’s album ‘Protection’ by Mad Professor, it had a whole new colour with a new personality – it was a strong artistic interpretation. When we spoke to our manager about ideas around the anniversary of ‘Moon Safari’, we remembered this album and how great it was. We wondered, who could do that today? Then we thought of some people, and when we actually proposed it to Vegyn, he wasn’t scared. Personally, I would have been terrified. It's so much work!

Vegyn: I know! [Laughs]

Nicolas Godin (Air): To work on 10 tracks, it’s a lot. There was such good energy, and I was surprised at how smooth things went. It was not a problem for you, I was very impressed.

Vegyn: I was terrified! It was such interesting work – the foundations of it were already so timeless as you said, so I was thinking to myself: ‘How do I not ruin this?’. For me, I was so interested in just getting to look at all the parts and how it was constructed. It's clear that the original record is great just in the way it's made so simply. All the machines that were used to make this music have been used for a long time, it just meant the whole thing felt very organic. It's been a soundtrack to many, and a lot of the Air catalogue has been a soundtrack to my life.

Nicolas Godin (Air): But you brought the final product. When I open the old files and see the different tracks, they're kind of cheap or fragile in a way. I wonder how we put all of this together, because they're all made using the same trick: one bassline, some pads, organs…

Vegyn: The MS-20…

Nicolas Godin (Air): The MS-20! But that’s it. There were maybe just six or eight tracks for each song. I was scared to break the secret of it, or to tear everything apart. The good thing is that ‘Blue Moon Safari’ isn’t a remix – it's not like the same tracks have been mixed differently or edited differently. It's just just a reinvention where, most of the time, you change the key or the bass roots. If you look at all the work that you did, you can breathe again knowing you’ve made something charming but in a different way.

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Vegyn, I know you’ve said before that you’re a huge fan of Air. Have you been inspired by them in your previous work?

Vegyn: Of course. Sonically, the Air project has this amazing quality to it, something about it that feels very ethereal but also very playful. There's a lot of sound design stuff that’s just incredible, especially with all the creative uses of the MS-20 when I wasn't expecting it.

Nicolas Godin (Air): That’s all JB, he’s an MS-20 wizard. He got that thing in a pawn shop in 1985 and became one with this instrument, he morphed into it. He still has it today! He’s made sounds on it I’ve never heard before, very futuristic and romantic.

You said you had just a month to make ‘Blue Moon Safari’, is that right?

Vegyn: No, I had time to do it, it was just my scheduling that shortened it!

Nicolas Godin (Air): But you were so fast with it. It took about five years to make ‘Moon Safari’. The riffs for ‘Sexy Boy’ were on my computer for so many years.

I guess you had the stems there ready for you to play with…

Vegyn: Yeah, I'll think about something for a really long time. The idea of the project will already be on my mind before I even do it. The first song that I was asked to work on was ‘All I Need’, and I wanted it so badly, so I was trying to make something that I thought you and JB would appreciate, but also something that was radically different to the original. I always think it’s disappointing when you hear a remix of something that could have been a brilliant opportunity to completely reinterpret the original. It was very easy for the tracks with vocals because you choose what to keep, and the rest of it will just re-harmonise everything.

Nicolas Godin (Air): It’s so much easier to rework a vocal track than an instrumental one.

Vegyn: Those are the hardest ones!

Nicolas Godin (Air): Exactly. We would be like, ‘What should we do? Make a whole new track?’. But you did a great job, and I know you were frustrated waiting for guitar parts.

Vegyn: Yeah. My friend John Keek, he’s a lunatic but a really incredible guitar player, I work with him quite a lot. Sometimes you can hear the thing in your mind, and I knew it just needed that guitar. Once it was delivered, I was like, ‘This is it’.

When I listen to ‘Blue Moon Safari’, it really reminds me of your recent work as Headache. It’s got that real dreamy, quite surreal sound. Did you have that in mind when working on this project?

Vegyn: I guess ‘Headache’ would have come out earlier that year, but that project was very trip hop influenced. I don’t think it coloured it too much, but I started using breaks more when I got bored of programming drums. That's definitely changed the quality of my output quite a bit.

‘Moon Safari’ has been credited as one of the most defining dance music albums of the past few decades. Looking back at that record, is there anything you’d change? Or was it the perfect debut?

Nicolas Godin (Air): I think I'm now at peace with the record. When an album is released, my head is always at the next one – you're like a different man when it’s finally out, so it was hard for me. When ‘Moon Safari’ was released, there were a lot of defaults like the bass being too light on ‘New Star in the Sky’, and I would have given everything to go back into the studio and lower it by 2 dB [laughs]. It was torturing me! But I’m at peace with it now, it’s the first time in about five or six years that I’m able to enjoy it the way it is. This tour made me realise, ‘Wow, we did that’. It was easy in a way to make this music because it was just a few tracks and four or five instruments, we were so limited. We were the first home studio generation to make these classic albums, but nowadays, with the computer generation, everything is possible. There’s way too many options.

Vegyn: On reflection, with the Headache stuff, my own music, and working on the ‘Moon Safari’ project, I’ve been trying to narrow down the key elements and find a way to reduce the music down so it has a real purpose. The fewer parts, the more meaningful those parts become. Thankfully, I was only dealing with about six or seven tracks on this project!

Talk us through your thought process when chopping and changing this album using the stems – what were there elements you wanted to keep in? How did you decide which direction to take each track?

Vegyn: It was definitely an atmosphere thing. For me, the vocal is always the core component of any song, so with those tracks, it was very simple. I’d take that out and then and then about three quarters of the way through, I’d see if any of the other parts could fit back in. With the more instrumental ones, I’d try to find something to act as the vocal – maybe it's the lead melody or something else – and I’d try to re-interpolate that.

What was the collaborative process like? Did you speak a lot throughout the production of ‘Blue Moon Safari’, or did you let Vegyn run away with it?

Nicolas Godin (Air): Before this, me and JB were in different worlds, we’re like a typical band where it was hard to communicate, so it wasn't making things easy. After doing the ‘Moon Safari’ tour we got along so well, and I wish we would have been like that when we worked on this new project, because a lot of it was made from a distance.

Vegyn: Both you and JB gave me very similar feedback when we did those FaceTime meetings. I’d ask what you wanted from the project, and you both said in a very French way: ‘We just want you to be free’ [laughs].

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You said that you wanted to “highlight the sadness” of the lyrics in ‘Sexy Boy’ while referring to some of Air’s extended discography. Can you tell us about that?

Vegyn: I was trying to translate some of the lyrics on ‘Sexy Boy’, and I was like, ‘Oh, okay. I get it now’. I love how cool and sexy the original is, and I really wanted to unpack that. Whenever there's a contradiction in music, I find it really interesting. I wanted to turn the dial up even further and try to make it feel more disconnected. I do love that juxtaposition, especially in instrumental music – it’s so much more open to interpretation. If you can make something feel a bit confusing, you’ve done a good job.

I imagine it's interesting for you, Nicolas, to see this new interpretation of the album that you wouldn’t have imagined when you were making it years ago…

Nicolas Godin (Air): I was very surprised. I couldn't imagine something like this. It still sounded super fresh – it's something unexpected for me.

How did you land on the name ‘Blue Moon Safari’?

Nicolas Godin (Air): I think that was your idea…

Vegyn: Yeah, I really didn't want it to feel like a sequel by any means. So when I was thinking of how to present it, I thought about the idea of a blue moon – it's a very rare occurrence. The colour blue also felt like a way to code the record emotionally, so it just made sense in that regard.

We haven't heard any music from Air in a while. Are you guys working on anything at the moment?

Nicolas Godin (Air): No, not really. The tour took over our lives so much, we thought we’d do 30 or 40 shows but it suddenly became endless. But thinking about new music, I don't know. I'm sceptical, because it's very rare that bands make good albums all the time, especially after such a long period away. I'm afraid that we’re in this situation where, whatever we do, it won’t be as good as it used to be. I think we’re good musicians, but when you make music, you need more than just nice melodies and chords, it needs to have a little bit of life in it. It's either there or it's not there. After making so many records with JB, I notice when a song really has it, you can feel it when you're making something good. So considering the history of this music, I don't think it would be the same.

You just did four ‘Moon Safari’ shows in Paris, right? How did that go?

Nicolas Godin (Air): It was amazing. Honestly, it's magic. I feel that when I go on stage, it’s still there.

Vegyn: You’re enjoying it now?

Nicolas Godin (Air): Yeah! I used to have imposter syndrome for a long time, so it was very difficult for me to go on stage because I didn’t feel legit. Our style comes from all of our weaknesses. I felt like deep down, we weren’t that good, but we did this whole great album that hid that fact. We're more magicians than musicians.

That’s interesting, I’ve heard a lot of artists say they struggle with imposter syndrome. You've even spoken about it before, right Vegyn?

Vegyn: Oh, yeah. I'm a phony actor! I feel that every day. The thing with getting older, for me, it's been about realigning and trying to pay attention to the things you actually wanna be doing rather than the things that you think you should be doing, like making music or helping other people to do that. Touring is great, but I can't enjoy it at this point.

What about it do you not enjoy? Is it being on stage?

Vegyn: I have that impostor syndrome. I think I would rather, at this point, be making more music. That feels like what I'm best at, and it’s what I'm meant to be doing.

You’ve worked on your fair share of remixes and productions over the years, especially with some of Air’s French peers like SebastiAn and Phoenix. What was different about working on this record?

Vegyn: I grew up listening to a lot of French electronic music in general, it's a real kind of escapism for me. My dad makes music and is in the industry, but he had very little understanding for this kind of music. It was my way of rebelling or escaping, and I just always appreciated the sensibilities. I don't know what it is in the water over there, but everyone's very cool. Whether that's the Ed Banger stuff or the artists who came out of the Versailles scene or whatever. Approaching this project was very different. When I just remix one song, I’ll make it as outrageous as possible. But with this, with a whole album, I had to think about it in a more linear way, and how it was all going to fit together. Making it in that short space of time built the cohesion through it as well.

You said you did it chronologically initially, and then changed the order later, why was that?

Nicolas Godin (Air): People don't really listen to full albums anymore. Also, if you change the track order, it feels like a new album. If you take the B-side of ‘Abbey Road’ for example and change the order, like you would when we had CD players and put it on random, it feels like you’ve discovered a new album, even if you know the tracklist by heart. So in this process of reinventing, I thought it would be interesting to have a different track order, which would also avoid people comparing both albums.

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Are you both working on new projects after this? What's next for each of you?

Nicolas Godin (Air): Personally, I tried to make some music on my own. I had this whole album finished, and then we decided to go on tour so it stopped everything, but that will hopefully be released in 2026 - 2027. I enjoy listening to classical music. I go to a lot of symphony concerts, but as a pop musician, I don’t see any way for me to do classical music without being a fraud.

Vegyn: No? I’m sure you could.

Nicolas Godin (Air): There's no way! [Laughs]. It’s too highbrow. I go every week to see concerts, and I hear all the clusters of sounds and all the timbres. I’m like, ‘Wow, this is amazing’. It's like a new world for me, but I’m more of an observer than a creator.

What about you, Vegyn? Anything coming up?

Vegyn: Lots of fun things! I want them to be a surprise.

Nicolas Godin (Air): I like that. When I look back at my career, the best memories are the fun times we had making records, not even the records themselves. It's just the process, you know?

Vegyn: Yeah, that’s why touring isn’t for me at the moment. It’s so miserable and drawn out, although it's obviously amazing to see people having fun. I wanna be able to give that experience to people, but I have a lot more fun in the studio for prolonged periods of time. This year, I'm trying to put out maybe four albums, so there’s lots of new music.

Nicolas Godin (Air): You can really hear it when you’re having fun in the studio. It’s difficult when you have a career and you suddenly start making records because it's your job.

Vegyn: Yeah. If you wanna make money, do something else!

Nicolas Godin (Air): I think we were the last generation to make money from music. Now, there's no more middle class in music, there's the rich and poor, and there's nothing in the middle. When we started Air, you could live as a non-commercial artist selling records. If someone wanted to listen to one track, they had to buy the recording. It's a different world now.

Vegyn: Music is so influenced by technology. The means of distributing vinyl records or CDs, it has to adapt so often. I think in some ways, it is harder to generate revenue, but there are a lot more opportunities to be able to do that completely independently. That definitely wasn’t the case in the past. In those years, you had to have the backing of a label or distribution company. Now, for better or worse, it's anyone's game – you just have to wear a lot of different hats. It's all a big process that everyone's trying to figure out, and I'm sure some new technology will come along one day and spoil it forever. We’ve just gotta adapt!

'Blue Moon Safari' is out now. Buy it here.

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Associate Digital Editor, follow her on Twitter