Pocket Symphony

Track listing

All songs written by JB Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, except "One Hell of a Party", lyrics by Jarvis Cocker; "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping", lyrics by Neil Hannon.

1. "Space Maker" – 4:02
2. Nicolas Godin – bass, guitar and solina
3. JB Dunckel – piano, synthesizers & vibraphone
4. Joey Waronker – drums and percussion
5. Strings arranged and conducted by Joby Talbot
6. Nicolas: We wanted to have this idea of the album literally as a pocket symphony so you imagine you're going into the opera and the lights go down and then this starts. It's not the greatest song on the album, but it's the best one to start with.
7. Jean-Benoit: This was a joke title from pace maker. Hilarious, huh?
8. "Once Upon a Time" – 5:02
9. JB Dunckel – vocals, piano, synthesizers and glockenspiel
10. Nicolas Godin – guitar, synth bass, drum machine and shamisen
11. Magic Malik – flute
12. Tony Allen – drums
13. Nicolas: It's a story of boys meet girl. A fairy tale. Jean-Benoit is singing. I don't like my voice, really.
14. Jean-Benoit: We like the fairy tales.
15. "One Hell of a Party" – 4:02
16. Jarvis Cocker – vocals
17. JB Dunckel – synthesizers and samples
18. Nicolas Godin – piano, koto, shamisen and bass
19. Joey Waronker – drums and percussion
20. Nicolas: Well, you'd have to talk to Jarvis about the lyrics. It's the kind of song where we really wanted to experiment with the instruments. And I played the piano exactly the way that Sakamoto would play on it.
21. Jean-Benoit: This is the sort of party where you are older and drunk and you are looking at the mess and wondering what happened. So we wanted the track to be very empty, skeletal and dark.
22. "Napalm Love" – 3:27
23. Nicolas Godin – bass and guitars, drum machine
24. JB Dunckel – vocals, piano and synthesizers
25. Nicolas: It's about the words you use to talk about love. If you list all the words that are used to talk about love they are often horrible, like falling in love, burning for someone, like it's really destructive.
26. "Mayfair Song" – 4:18
27. JB Dunckel – piano, arp percussions, xylophone, voice pad and synthesizers
28. Nicolas Godin – bass, drum machine and keyboards
29. Nicolas: It's a song we wrote here (Mayfair Studios) while Nigel was mixing. So we set up a little studio in the other room, we were recording. When we did Premiers Symptomes we used to do a bassline, get a vibe and that was it. We forgot how to do that and we wanted to get back to that simplicity. Nigel told us: “Do what you're good at”.
30. Jean-Benoit: We made this track very quickly, it only took one day.
31. "Left Bank" – 4:07
32. Nicolas Godin – guitars and vocals
33. JB Dunckel – synthesizers, drum machine and vocals
34. Nicolas: This is a song I wrote in a hotel room after a lovely weekend with a girl. And then Monday morning she left without saying a word and I wrote it on my guitar, very simple. Crazy French girls!
35. Jean-Benoit: Nicolas and I are always talking about this non-existent girl that we want to meet, that we'd like to have in our bed, the one who left, recently. In our minds we say to her, “come back I love you, I've been a naughty boy”. This is our obsession right now.
36. "Photograph" – 3:51
37. JB Dunckel – rhodes, piano, synthesizers and vocals
38. Nicolas Godin – bass, guitar, glockenspiel and tambourine
39. Joey Waronker – drums and percussion
40. Magic Malik – flute
41. Nicolas: Very cinematic music. When we started with Premiers Symptomes we really liked Blaxploitation soundtrack music; that groove, suspenseful music and we wanted to go back to this. We've come back to this grooving thing that we had lost.
42. Jean-Benoit: The original title of this was "Message For A Rock Star" and the idea was this: ok you are a rock star and God is also a fan of yours and he wants to have your autograph. You are such a rock star that even God wants you.
43. "Mer du Japon" – 3:04 (English: Sea of Japan)
44. Nicolas Godin – bass, guitars, koto, tambourine and drums
45. JB Dunckel – piano, synthesizers and vocals
46. Nicolas: Haiku music. J'ai perdu la raison dans la mer du Japon. I lost my mind in the sea of Japan. Just one simple line.
47. Jean-Benoit: When you go to Los Angeles or Japan there is something special in the air, and we wanted to capture this special Pacific touch. It's almost like a perfume. It sounds a little bit like a French band Taxi Girl, Mirwais' first band. We were big fans of this band and there is a similar feel in the production.
48. "Lost Message" – 3:32
49. JB Dunckel – piano and synthesizers
50. Nicolas Godin – bass, guitar, memory moog, koto and drum machine
51. Nicolas: It's so Satie and so French. It sounds so different.
52. Jean-Benoit: In my mind I see a sort of fresh modern Emmanuelle soundtrack. It's really erotic.
53. "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping" – 3:35
54. Neil Hannon – vocals
55. Nicolas Godin – guitars and koto
56. JB Dunckel – piano, synth bass, vibraphone
57. Strings arranged by David Richard Campbell
58. Nicolas: This is the Neil Hannon collaboration. I love this song so much. We wrote this for Charlotte.
59. "Redhead Girl" – 4:33
60. JB Dunckel – vocals, rhodes, synthesizers, piano and voice pad
61. Nicolas Godin – guitars, bass and memory moog, wind chimes, glockenspiel and koto
62. Nicolas: This is my muse. Except she's not a redhead. It's very conceptual.
63. Jean-Benoit: It's about Perfume, the book by Patrick Süskind, it's about the cliches that redheads have a special smell. It's like a legend.
64. "Night Sight" – 4:16
65. JB Dunckel – rhodes and synthesizers
66. Strings arranged and conducted by Joby Talbot
67. Nicolas: This is my favourite track on the album. It's very conceptual, because you have this Rhodes with four notes and a synth with seven notes and they have these circular patterns that occasionally merge. It's a massage for the mind!
68. Jean-Benoit: We wanted to do a sort of modern track with an irregular pattern on the keyboard. It's totally improvised. It sounds like a slow chemical reaction, like oxidisation.

13. "The Duelist" (iTunes or OpenDisc bonus track) – 4:40
14. Charlotte Gainsbourg: vocals
15. Jarvis Cocker: vocals
16. JB Dunckel: Piano, Synthesizers, Background Voices
17. Nicolas Godin: Drums, electric guitar, bass guitar, Koto, tambourine
18. "Crickets" (iTunes pre-order or OpenDisc bonus track) – 3:32
19. JB Dunckel : Piano, rhodes, string keyboards
20. Nicolas Godin : CR70 beatbox, memory moog
21. Recorded, produced and mixed by AIR at Studio du Golfe,
22. Saint-Nom La Breteche, Eux-mêmes
23. "Time Capsule" (Japan or United States OpenDisc bonus track) – 4:20
24. JB Dunckel : Piano, synthesizers, electronic percussion
25. Nicolas Godin : Keyboards and bass

Personnel

Air

Additional musicians