Nuit Incolore Dans la Pénombre

Influenced by dance, theater, and the fine arts, composer/clarinetist Louis Sclavis once again illustrates his increasing relevance to modern music thanks to this impressive 2002 effort. With his fifth outing for ECM Records, Sclavis continues his path of artistic excellence. This is a soundtrack for a recently exhumed French silent movie, though viewing the film shouldn't necessarily be a prerequisite for letting one's imagination delve into the visual aspects of this reconditioned antique. On this release, the clarinetist utilizes a dual string section to complement accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier's Parisian cabaret-type musings amid the quintet's shrewd instillation of movement.

The genre of the mélodie accompanied Fauré like a kind of personal journal. This music voluptuously – and sometimes vehemently – encompasses the meanderings of the soul: dreams, nostalgia, reflections or mirages . . . Stéphane Degout and Alain Planès take advantage of the iridescent tones of an 1892 Pleyel in their interpretation of some of his finest song cycles, including the testamentary L’Horizon chimérique.

It's a neat trick that Air began their albums with a trip to the moon via Moon Safari and returned to it with Le Voyage Dans La Lune, the expanded version of the duo's score to Georges Méliès' 1912 sci-fi classic. It's a perfect project for Air; Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin's sound has always had a spacey quality, and film music has been a vital component of their work. Le Voyage Dans La Lune presents an interesting challenge for Air in that most of their other scores and soundtracks have been for films with more modern settings (even the '70s kitsch they subverted and romanticized in their Virgin Suicides soundtrack). While Dunckel and Godin don't attempt to make this music sound like it was recorded on wax cylinder, many of the cues have a stateliness that suggest a much earlier time…