Air – Don’t Be Light

Paris and Los Angeles, 2000-2001: softer chords and a harder bass line

Early 2001, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel are still building 10 000 Hz Legend, and Don’t Be Light is already the second piece on the tape. Electronic Performers came first. Godin later told Shindig that each Air album keeps one song that could have belonged to the record before it. On this album, that song is Don’t Be Light. The chords still carry the softer Air of Moon Safari. The bass, the guests, and the length do not. The electric piano stays warm. The bass and the guests move the other way.

Source and Virgin released the album in France on 28 May 2001. Astralwerks issued it in the United States the next day. Tracking had run through 2000 and 2001 at Appolo in Paris, then at the Bomb Factory in Los Angeles, Hollywood Sound, and Capitol in Hollywood. Air produced. Tony Hoffer came in for extra production, editing, and the mix, with Julien Delfaud assisting. Nilesh Patel mastered. Godin told KindaMuzik they had left the Versailles countryside, where Moon Safari and The Virgin Suicides were made, for a small place in town. He called the new record urban. Don’t Be Light is where that change is easiest to hear: a long arrangement, a hard bass tone, and a line of guests who each left a part behind.

The finished track runs 6 minutes 18 and sits at number 10. Brian Reitzell plays drums. Justin Meldal-Johnsen plays bass, including a distorted solo Dunckel later called unusually rocky for the duo. Roger Joseph Manning Jr. adds keyboards. Elin Carlson sings a soprano line. Jean Croc whistles toward the close. Beck speaks in the middle. On KCRW, 26 May 2001, a few days before the album reached shops, he said Air had asked him for Lizard King-type prose. He wrote it, thought it tipped into pretension, and they talked him into leaving it on the record. Unlike The Vagabond, where Beck shares the writing credit, Don’t Be Light lists Dunckel and Godin as the writers.