Air - Playground Love (feat. Gordon Tracks)

0:00Air:You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirwe. This episode is sponsored by the new video game Mixtape. It's sort of like if the movie Dazed and Confused were a video game. It's about high school and adventure and nostalgia. And if you're the kind of person who cares about the power of an amazing mixtape, then this game is probably for you. The soundtrack features Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Suzy and the Banshees, Joy Division, The Cure, and a lot more. Mixtape comes out May 7th on console and PC.

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1:48Air:the band air is a duo from versailles france the first ep came out in 1995 followed by their critically acclaimed debut album moon safari which was an international hit then they made the music for the film the virgin suicides which was written and directed by oscar winner sophia coppola based on the novel by jeffrey eugenides the movie came out in 1999 and it was sophia Coppola's first film. An album version of Ayer's score came out in 2000 and was nominated for a Brit Award. Pitchfork put it at number four on their list of the best film scores of all time. In addition to the instrumental music that appears in the movie, Ayer also wrote a song for the end credits called Playground Love.

2:31Air:That song featured Sofia Coppola's future husband, Thomas Mars, from the French band Phoenix on vocals. Phoenix was still a very new band, and he and Sofia had even met yet. Tomás appears on the song under the name Gordon Tracks.

2:56Air:So for this episode, I spoke to all of them. Nicola and JB from Air, Sofia Coppola, Tomás Mars, as well as Brian Reitzel, the music supervisor on the film. The story of the song Playground Love begins over 25 years ago, with Sofia Coppola starting her work on The Virgin Suicides.

3:14Gordon Tracks:I'm Sofia Coppola.

3:16Air:How did you first hear Ayers' music?

3:19Gordon Tracks:I remember I was in London, and I was writing the script for Virgin Suicides, so it was probably 97 or 98, and I was in Rough Trade record shop, just looking around at albums, and I saw Ayers, I guess, a CD. And I remember just asking the guy like oh is this good do you like it and they recommended it so I bought it and I took it home and I was listening to it while I was working on my script and yeah I just got really into the atmosphere of it and because the story is set in the 70s but it's actually 20 years in the future looking back at that time I like the idea of not having music from the period for the score that it's a memory and then to have contemporary music that's related to the 70s, and it had that quality.

4:09Air:It was both current and 70s retro. My name is Brian Reitzel. I was the music supervisor for The Virgin Suicides. This was before the release of Moon Safari. When Moon Safari did come out a few months later, it just sealed the deal, you know? How did you all actually meet? I met the air guys in LA when they were here doing a music video.

4:30Gordon Tracks:It's a very LA classic story. Like we met him at the party at the Chateau Marmont. that's so unoriginal. I am Nicolas from the band Air. I am JB Dunkel, also from Air. And so we met him in a party and then we decided to play with him some drums. Because Brian Razell is also a drummer. He was in this band called Red Cross. They were putting together a band with all U.S.

4:57Air:musicians to do a tour for Moon Safari. So the timing was just perfect. Had you two ever had any experience scoring film before?

5:07Gordon Tracks:No. No. That's why it was cool because we never did soundtrack, we never did movies. So we said, okay, let's go for the ride and see what happens. The style of the movie is very beautiful and it's kind of ethereal in a way. But we started by reading the book and the book is much more dark. So very fast. The idea was to do very dark music, especially because we were coming after Moon Safari which was a very light kind of easy listening album and we wanted to show the dark side of us and also it was a good way to avoid the second album syndrome because you can have a lot of pressure but if you decide that the second album is a soundtrack it's a totally different context we had this concept that every part had to be understandable and listenable on its own so it was not exactly like a real soundtrack.

6:02Gordon Tracks:It was more like a sort of soundtrack-y pop album around the movie. And we had like some VHS tapes, like some sequences of the movie, and we would improvise.

6:16Air:How do the two of you write together? Are you in the same room when you're writing? Yeah, we're even on the same piano. You sit at the piano together?

6:25Gordon Tracks:Yeah, it's a four-hand recording. I played the melody and JB played the chords.

6:42Gordon Tracks:We had like an eight-track recorder with Noé-Maurie and so when something was wrong we had to re-record again and to replay it. So we would replay constantly what we were doing and it was the perfect way to learn the song. But this theme, this melody, these chords, we recorded them many times, like in many versions. We did like a vibraphone version.

7:16Gordon Tracks:We did an organ version, we did a rose version. Brian Redzel flew to Paris, he did the drums.

7:27Gordon Tracks:There were variations of a main theme threaded throughout the score. We kept the basic idea of it. In a way, the other versions were rehearsals. Thomas Pankalter from Daft Punk, he said something in an interview that I really understand. He said that he's always like putting everything in the trash. And this is a beautiful way to make music just to delete and to destroy constantly what you do. And at the end, there will be like something surviving and it's going to be good.

8:08Gordon Tracks:They took this theme high school over and saw it all over the movie.

8:15Gordon Tracks:and so they called us and they asked yeah we need to do a song for the credits rather than license a song

8:23Air:we thought it would be cooler and more classic to have our original song for the film

8:34Air:what's the significance for you of the end credits song in a film

8:39Gordon Tracks:I always thought that's so important because it's kind of like your big finish. It's the end. It's the feeling that you, the audience, leaves with. And it's sort of a punctuation. So I always feel like it's really important. I think having an original end credit song is just a classic way to tie everything together, to have the music crystallize into one complete piece.

8:58Air:I suggested a song arrangement with a vocal of the main theme, but I think it was hard for them at first. They had already delivered the score. I was back in LA. They thought they were done, you know.

9:08Gordon Tracks:Plus, we wanted vocals. At the time, we didn't sing on our albums. But I think we tried to describe this magic moment of having like two young people falling in love. First of all, you do some yogurts. You know, we call it yogurts. It means that you try to sing something, but it doesn't make any sense. And the sounds are falling naturally and they're transformed into words. So like anytime or anywhere, this kind of thing it has to sound good when you sing it through the vocoder Anytime you want

9:54Anywhere you want

10:02Anytime

10:06Gordon Tracks:Anywhere

10:11Gordon Tracks:Everything you'd say We were in Versailles and the only singer we knew in Versailles was Thomas. So my name is Thomas Morris. Somehow for this specific project, I picked chord and tracks as an artist name and I'm a member of the band Phoenix. We have a long history with Elle because we were their backing band. And they were going to tour in the UK first. The label thought we just signed Phoenix. They don't have experience. I'm sure they'd love to get some live experience and play with you guys. I was also playing drums in my band on the record. And so we thought we'll be their backing band and I'll play drums.

10:58Gordon Tracks:And when we were rehearsing, they just finished Moon Safari. They were working on Virgin Suicides. So it was really exciting for us because it was like going into the headquarters of a band about to explode internationally. And so we called him and said, man, we have to do a song for this movie. Can you sing it and can you write lyrics? And by the way, can you do the drums as well? I said, yeah, I'll do it. They had written one line. They had written Anytime Anywhere. High School Over is in F sharp and we changed it into C for Thomas. Because of his vocal range? Yeah, for him to sing properly on it.

11:42Air:Where did you start with the lyrics?

11:44Gordon Tracks:I specifically saw the scene of Trip Fontaine on the football field. There was also a famous shot of him getting into the high school in slow motion and all the girls are turning, like his hair is blowing. And the music was so inspiring that the words came really quickly. I'm a high school lover

12:10Gordon Tracks:And you're my favorite flavor

12:16Air:Did they give you any direction as to how they wanted you to sing the song?

12:20Gordon Tracks:So they are very loose on certain things and they're very extremely precise on others. They are very loose on the lyrics. Like everything that was my creativity somehow, they really trusted me on this. But the rhythm of the song, they wanted it to be exactly on the grid. It was almost like if I was out of tune, it didn't matter. But if I was like slightly behind, that was a huge problem for them. I remember them being very precise in that sense.

12:56Gordon Tracks:You're my playground love

13:01Air:There's something really specific and kind of creepy in a great way. You're almost whispering when you sing.

13:07Gordon Tracks:I remember growing up listening a lot to In Excess, on kick, they have a recording technique that's pretty incredible because it makes it sound really close. this is before ASMR and it was the ultimate ear candy growing up and I remember that was a reference for myself I was like I wanted to sound like this at the time I didn't understand that you need the right amount of space between the mic and the voice I was like let me get as close as possible so I was always when I would set it up I would push it so that I was so close Yet my hands are shaking