Air • Love 2

After releasing a subpar album, 2007•s •Pocket Symphony,• French chill-out extraordinaires Air crash land with a new arsenal of their trademark Sophia Coppola-adored synth-pop. Their fifth studio work, titled Love 2, reads like an egomania trip for the multi-instrumentalist tag team of Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin. Recorded at the band•s new studio, Atlas (which may or may not hover over Paris), Love 2 is a dissemination of Air•s affection, passion, and lust for their music. The first single, •Sing Sang Sung,• is a modular utopia where the weather always seems to be sunny and ripe for a slow-motion beach romp. •Be A Bee• is as cool and collected as James Bond, but races as if the man of mystery decided to pick up guitar lessons from Q. •Tropical Disease• dusts off Dunckel•s saxophone and resurrects vibes from Air•s sensuous Virgin Suicides-featured song, •Playground Love.• But nothing is more arresting than •So Light Is Her Footfall,• which recalls the best of grungy, creeptastic French pop icon Serge Gainsbourg. The song stalks, haunts, and begs for restraining orders. Such is Air•s hopeless devotion to their musical roots as well as their reputation as suave European entertainers. But Love 2 is more than just an ironic, Prince-esque sequel to humanity•s favorite social pastime. It is about the duo•s unwavering confidence in their ability to cause secondhand romance in many shades. Whatever your definition of love is, you•ll find it somewhere in the deep craters of this collection.

Tiesto • Kaleidoscope

Dutch DJ Tiesto is one of the best-known and well-loved trance producers in the world. His In Search Of Sunrise album series is canonical in that sometimes monotonous yet very broad category of •club music.• Though he has constructed countless mixes, Kaleidoscope is only Tiesto•s fourth studio album since his start in the mid-nineties. He attempts what many DJs have tried to do ever since music blogs have yielded popular acts in the sometimes vague, broad category of •indie music.• On Kaleidoscope, Tiesto attempts to fuse indie and club together in order to also fuse the fan bases together. Assembling some A and B-list indie stars, Tiesto starts the album off with a Euro dream collaboration, wrangling singer Jonsi from Icelandic ambient collective Sigur Ros to guest on the epic, spaced-out, seven-and-a-half minute title track. Everything after this climactic song just isn•t as satisfying. •Feel It In My Bones,• featuring twin singer-songwriters Tegan and Sara, has enough pop •n lock to move crowds, but sounds no different than the club/indie crossovers sometimes expressed in dispensable remix fashion. One of the more distinguishable guest appearances is Top 40 fairy Nelly Furtado on the dull, repetitive, •Who Wants To Be Alone,• which sounds like something Victoria Secret blasts in stores across the nation. By taking his album to the blog scene, against the electronica backdrop of blog savvy acts such as Daft Punk, Justice, and MSTRKRFT, Tiesto•s efforts to step into hipster territory just fall flat. Here lies its biggest problem: Kaleidoscope sacrifices the precision, intensity, and aggression so often heard in Tiesto•s music for weak song structures and exposure to the blog scene. The collection relies too much on guest appearances, which aren•t as integral to a DJ of Tiesto•s progressive trance style. With the exception of its volcanic opener, the majority of Kaleidoscope is about as thrilling as clipping your toenails at the DMV. Internet hipsters will yawn, and Tiesto•s faithful fanbase just might follow suit.