Pocket Symphony
Encyclopedia
Pocket Symphony is the fifth full-length album
by French
duo
Air. The album was released in March 2007 and features collaborations with Jarvis Cocker
and Neil Hannon
.
Pocket Symphony also incorporates some of the Japanese instruments Godin recently learned to play from an Okinawan master musician: the koto
(also referred to as a Japanese floor harp) and the three-string, banjo-like shamisen
. However, a press release claims that "conventional instruments continue to play a great role" in the duo's music. The album features art by Xavier Veilhan
.
The first single from this album, "Once Upon a Time", can be heard on the group's MySpace
page.
Pocket Symphony debuted on the U.S. Billboard 200
at number 40, with about 17,000 copies sold in its first week.
Bonus tracks
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
by French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
duo
Duet (music)
A duet is a musical composition for two performers. In classical music, the term is most often used for a composition for two singers or pianists; with other instruments, the word duo is also often used. A piece performed by two pianists performing together on the same piano is referred to as...
Air. The album was released in March 2007 and features collaborations with Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...
and Neil Hannon
Neil Hannon
Neil Hannon is a Northern Irish singer and songwriter, best known as the creator and frontman of the chamber pop group The Divine Comedy. The band's official website even goes so far as to say, "The Divine Comedy is Neil Hannon," and Hannon is quoted in an interview as saying, "The Divine Comedy...
.
Pocket Symphony also incorporates some of the Japanese instruments Godin recently learned to play from an Okinawan master musician: the koto
Koto (musical instrument)
The koto is a traditional Japanese stringed musical instrument, similar to the Chinese guzheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. The koto is the national instrument of Japan. Koto are about length, and made from kiri wood...
(also referred to as a Japanese floor harp) and the three-string, banjo-like shamisen
Shamisen
The , also called is a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usually "shamisen" but sometimes "jamisen" when used as a suffix . -Construction:The shamisen is a plucked stringed instrument...
. However, a press release claims that "conventional instruments continue to play a great role" in the duo's music. The album features art by Xavier Veilhan
Xavier Veilhan
Xavier Veilhan is a French artist who lives and works in Paris. His work consists of photography, sculpture, film, painting and installation art.-Works:...
.
The first single from this album, "Once Upon a Time", can be heard on the group's MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
page.
Pocket Symphony debuted on the U.S. Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
at number 40, with about 17,000 copies sold in its first week.
Track listing
All tracks written by JB Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, except where stated.- "Space Maker" – 4:02
- Nicolas Godin – bass, guitar and solina
- JB Dunckel – piano, synthesizers & vibraphone
- Joey Waronker – drums and percussion
- Strings arranged and conducted by Joby Talbot
- 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.
- Jean-Benoit: This was a joke title from pace maker. Hilarious, huh?
- "Once Upon a TimeOnce Upon a Time (Air song)"Once Upon a Time" is a song by the French duo Air and is the second track on their 2007 studio album Pocket Symphony. The radio edit version of the song was released as the first single from that album in January 2007 via digital download stores...
" – 5:02- JB Dunckel – vocals, piano, synthesizers and glockenspiel
- Nicolas Godin – guitar, synth bass, drum machine and shamisen
- Magic Malik – flute
- Tony AllenTony Allen (musician)Tony Oladipo Allen is aNigerian drummer, composer, and songwriter who currently lives and works in Paris. He is currently writing his autobiography "Tony Allen: Master Drummer of Afrobeat" with author/musician Michael E...
– drums - Nicolas: It’s a story of boys meet girl. A fairy tale. Jean-Benoit is singing. I don’t like my voice, really.
- Jean-Benoit: We like the fairy tales.
- "One Hell of a Party" (lyrics by Jarvis CockerJarvis CockerJarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician and frontman for the band Pulp. Through his work with the band, Cocker became a figurehead of the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s. Following Pulp's hiatus Cocker has led a successful solo career...
) – 4:02- Jarvis Cocker – vocals
- JB Dunckel – synthesizers and samples
- Nicolas Godin – piano, koto, shamisen and bass
- Joey Waronker – drums and percussion
- 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 SakamotoRyuichi SakamotoAfter working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as...
would play on it. - 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.
- "Napalm Love" – 3:27
- Nicolas Godin – bass and guitars, drum machine
- JB Dunckel – vocals, piano and synthesizers
- 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.
- "Mayfair Song" – 4:18
- JB Dunckel – piano, arp percussions, xylophone, voice pad and synthesizers
- Nicolas Godin – bass, drum machine and synthesizers
- 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”.
- Jean-Benoit: We made this track very quickly, it only took one day.
- "Left Bank" – 4:07
- Nicolas Godin – guitars and vocals
- JB Dunckel – synthesizers, drum machine and vocals
- 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!
- 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.
- "Photograph" – 3:51
- JB Dunckel – rhodes, piano, synthesizers and vocals
- Nicolas Godin – bass, guitar, glockenspiel and tambourine
- Joey Waronker – drums and percussion
- Magic Malik – flute
- 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.
- 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.
- "Mer du JaponMer du Japon"Mer du Japon" is a song by the French duo Air and is the eighth track on their 2007 studio album Pocket Symphony. The song was released as the second single from that album on June 11, 2007. The single will feature a new version of the track and a remix by The Teenagers...
" – 3:04 (English: Sea of Japan)- Nicolas Godin – bass, guitars, koto, tambourine and drums
- JB Dunckel – piano, synthesizers and vocals
- 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.
- 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.
- "Lost Message" – 3:32
- JB Dunckel – piano and synthesizers
- Nicolas Godin – bass, guitar, memory moog, koto and drum machine
- Nicolas: It’s so Satie and so French. It sounds so different.
- Jean-Benoit: In my mind I see a sort of fresh modern Emmanuelle soundtrack. It’s really erotic.
- "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping" (lyrics by Neil Hannon) – 3:35
- Neil HannonNeil HannonNeil Hannon is a Northern Irish singer and songwriter, best known as the creator and frontman of the chamber pop group The Divine Comedy. The band's official website even goes so far as to say, "The Divine Comedy is Neil Hannon," and Hannon is quoted in an interview as saying, "The Divine Comedy...
– vocals - Nicolas Godin – guitars and koto
- JB Dunckel – piano, synth bass, vibraphone
- Strings arranged by David Richard Campbell
- Nicolas: This is the Neil Hannon collaboration. I love this song so much. We wrote this for CharlotteCharlotte GainsbourgCharlotte Lucy Gainsbourg is an Anglo-French actress and singer. After releasing an album with her father at the age of fifteen, more than twenty years passed before she released two albums as an adult to commercial and critical success...
.
- Neil Hannon
- "Redhead Girl" – 4:33
- JB Dunckel – vocals, rhodes, synthesizers, piano and voice pad
- Nicolas Godin – guitars, bass and memory moog, wind chimes, glockenspiel and koto
- Nicolas: This is my muse. Except she’s not a redhead. It’s very conceptual.
- Jean-Benoit: It’s about Perfume, the book by Patrick SüskindPatrick SüskindPatrick Süskind is a German writer and screenwriter.- Life and work :The public knows little about Patrick Süskind. He has withdrawn from the literary scene in Germany and never grants interviews or allows photos. He was born in Ambach am Starnberger See, near Munich in Germany...
, it’s about the cliches that redheads have a special smell. It’s like a legend.
- "Night Sight" – 4:16
- JB Dunckel – rhodes and synthesizers
- Strings arranged and conducted by Joby Talbot
- 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!
- 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.
Bonus tracks
- "The Duelist" (iTunes or OpenDisc bonus track) – 4:40
- "Crickets" (iTunes pre-order bonus track) – 3:32
- "Time Capsule" (Japan or OpenDisc bonus track) - 4:20
Personnel
- Tony Allen – drums
- David Richard Campbell – string arrangement
- Jarvis Cocker – vocals
- JB Dunckel – synthesizers, piano, vocals, rhodes, voice pad, vibraphoneVibraphoneThe vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....
, synth bass, samples, drum machine, arp percussions, xylophone, glockenspiel - Nicolas Godin – guitars, bass, kotoKoto (musical instrument)The koto is a traditional Japanese stringed musical instrument, similar to the Chinese guzheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Korean gayageum and the Vietnamese đàn tranh. The koto is the national instrument of Japan. Koto are about length, and made from kiri wood...
, drum machine, shamisenShamisenThe , also called is a three-stringed, Japanese musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi. The Japanese pronunciation is usually "shamisen" but sometimes "jamisen" when used as a suffix . -Construction:The shamisen is a plucked stringed instrument...
, memory moog, tambourine, glockenspielGlockenspielA glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, vocals, piano, synthesizers, synth bass, solina, drums, wind chimes - Neil Hannon – vocals
- Magic Malik – flute
- Joby Talbot – string arrangement, conducting
- Joey Waronker – drums, percussion
Charts
| Chart (2007) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
22 |
| U.S. Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
40 |
| U.S. Top Electronic Albums Top Electronic Albums Dance/Electronic Albums is a music chart published weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks the top-selling electronic music albums in the United States. The chart debuted on the issue dated June 30, 2001. It originally began as a fifteen-position chart and has since expanded to twenty-five... |
1 |
External links
- Official album site
- Reviews at MetacriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...