French electronicists Air describe City Reading as a spoken-word album, acknowledging that their music is intended to hover in the background while Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco reads extracts from his novel City, which concerns the lurid imaginative life of a mathematical prodigy.
The project took root last year, when Baricco invited Air to perform live at a reading he gave at Rome's Teatro Valle. Air have some previous experience as accompanying musicians, having devised the score for Sofia Coppola's directorial debut The Virgin Suicides, but anybody expecting a full-scale Air album should have a trial listen first.
Baricco's gravelly monotone would put the speaking clock to sleep, and while Air contribute distant thunder, lonesome wind noises and artful textures of varying ghostliness, this is really one for Baricco's fans.
