Air — Casanova 70. The story of the band’s first trip hop single

This is how Air sounded before turning to psychedelia. In 1995, Parisian clubs were shaken by fast house and techno music brought by the Brits from overseas. At the same time, the English found a word for their own quiet hazy music—trip hop. France began to look for something similar. Nicolas Godin’s friends from the Source label gave him the opportunity to record a track for them. They knew he was playing with the equipment, and since Nicolas couldn’t make any fast club music, he agreed to make a trip hop track.

“I had just one sampler and with, like, maybe two or five seconds of sampling memory in it. Basically, I had to make a drum loop and I was not good at that. Especially I admire hip hop bands and they were making great loops, and I was a guy from Versailles and I didn’t know to make a great hip hop loop, it’s not my culture. I went in a friend’s house and I record some drums for like ten minutes, the same beat, and I put them in the cassettes and then I went back home and in the ten minutes I can isolate it back for three seconds. Maybe less than that, maybe one second and a half.