French duo Air practically cornered the market in smooth, chill-out music in the late 1990s. The band's seminal debut album Moon Safari spawned the hits Sexy Boy and All I Need, which have since become the soundtrack to every travel programme ever made for TV. With this distinctive cinematic sound, Air has regularly contributed to film scores for director Sofia Coppola such as The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation and Marie Antoinette.

On Friday evening, the ambient chords of Air will be wafting around the Opera House as Gallic twosome Jean Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin will be performing live. I caught up with one half of Air, Jean Benoit Dunckel or JB, as he likes to be called. Possessed with a rich French accent that hangs a sense of the profound on his every sentence, JB is every bit as mysterious as the music.

"The tour it starts and stops you know, it's a long story and it started a long time ago during the spring and now it's winter. It's more than playing music in front of people, it's an experience," reflects Jean Benoit.

"We enjoy touring as the different countries influence us and sometimes we are stuck in the middle of nowhere. The last time was in Slovakia. We didn't know the country and we had time to visit a castle, speak with people and walk around."

Renowned for their use of obscure knob-laden synthesisers and large keyboard apparatus, Air is a roadie's worst nightmare. The Opera House stage is sure to be packed to the rafters with the equipment needed to generate Air's expansive melodies.

"We have a full band with us, but so much gear. I'm fed up with all that, we have to make it simpler. We are five people on stage and we're trying to find the energy and give something powerful."

With a new album Pocket Symphony released earlier this year, the band will draw on tracks from all of their studio albums for the live performance.

"We do a patchwork of a little of everything, we play four tracks from the last album and the other tracks are from different periods. It's different live, because it's impossible to recreate the same sound as in the studio. The album versions are good versions, so we try and stick with them. But sometimes it's impossible to play them on stage. We have to make some choices."

It's nearly a decade since Air first broke into the mainstream with their otherworldly sound and Jean Benoit believes they now attract a very special audience.

"We attract the freaks to our gigs. To know Air you have to be curious because we are not played on the radio so much and we are not everywhere on TV. Most of the time it's definitely the freaks. But I look at them and I love them!"