Back where it all began

After emerging as a pair of sweet, extraterrestrial Frenchmen with a deep love of antique synthesizers, Air surprised everybody by following the now-classic ‘‘Moon Safari’’ with ‘‘10,000 Hz Legend,’’ an album that band member Jean-Benoit Dunckel described as ‘‘more extreme, more uncommercial, and very nasty.’’

Meanwhile, fellow electronic music linchpin and king of chill Moby chased his career-defining 1999 album ‘‘Play’’ with ‘‘18,’’ a collection so similar to ‘‘Play’’ that no one seemed to notice its arrival.

Today, both acts go back to their roots in very different ways. For Air, this means the new album ‘‘Talkie Walkie’’ (Astralwerks) revisits the melodic, expansive, retro-futuristic doodlings of ‘‘Moon Safari.’’ Moby returns to the underground club scene, where he started his career, with ‘‘Baby Monkey’’ (V2), an album released under the pseudonym Voodoo Child.

Air’s ‘‘Talkie Walkie’’ begins with the utilitarian ‘‘Venus’’ but quickly reveals its charming nature with the seductive ‘‘Cherry Blossom Girl.’’ The sublime arrangements that Air so successfully navigated in ‘‘Moon Safari’’ finally drift back to life. A flute flutters passionately over an electronic symphony, while Dunckel and Nicolas Godin capably handle the vocal duties without the crutch of a vocoder.

Surprisingly, Air worked with a proper rock producer on ‘‘Talkie.’’ Nigel Godrich, the knob twiddler behind Radiohead’s ‘‘OK Computer’’ and Beck’s ‘‘Sea Change,’’ had the sense to let the pair remain as flaky as ever, but he also reined in the asperity that marred 2001’s ‘‘10,000 Hz Legend.’’ Even when Air sneaks off on an instrumental tangent with the song ‘‘Mike Mills,’’ the result is deeply satisfying, like a well-tempered Bach fugue as performed in duet by E. Power Biggs and Paul Mauriat.

The duo seems more intent on balancing its diaphanous moments with solid pop offerings, and it’s this constant shifting of moods that keeps ‘‘Talkie’’ moving quickly. The album’s high point, ‘‘Surfing on a Rocket,’’ is a giddy dollop of pop that offers the catchiest countdown to blastoff since Peter Schilling’s ‘‘Major Tom.’’

The combination of romantic and irreverent, with healthy traces of Gallic moodiness and sensuality, makes ‘‘Talkie Walkie’’ as indispensable as the benchmark ‘‘Moon Safari.’’ ‘‘Talkie’’ is also an early contender for one of the most beautiful albums of the year. Dunckel and Godin are well on their way to mastering the art of creating indelibly catchy pop.

The same cannot be said of Moby’s ‘‘Baby Monkey.’’ But the self-effacing Moby makes it clear from the outset that he has no such ambitions for his album, which is why he released it under his alias.

‘‘Baby Monkey’’ was inspired by a party in abandoned railway tunnels in Glasgow. ‘‘I arrived home the next day and decided I wanted to make a simple, straightforward dance record,’’ Moby writes in the album’s liner notes.

And that’s exactly what he’s done. With a minimum of fuss and sampling, Moby recorded an album of house and trance music that is a throwback to the days of ‘‘Go’’ and ‘‘Feeling So Real,’’ minus the splashy breaks. ‘‘Baby Monkey’’ feels like a superstar cleansing his palate and deciding which direction to explore next. For now, Moby has hung up his rock star ambitions (and given that wobbly voice a rest) and returned to his geek roots.

But in his effort to anonymously release an album of dance music, Moby has instead released an album of anonymous dance music. Despite the high number of beats per minute, there’s something oddly anemic about this collection. The only track that inspires jubilation is opener ‘‘Gotta Be Loose in Your Mind,’’ which hints at the fun of the ‘‘Everything Is Wrong’’ era. Purely functional, ‘‘Baby Monkey’’ is devoid of its author’s quirkiness, and it’s that quirkiness that makes Moby’s music so special.

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com