Air — Love 2

The problem with chill-out music is its creators can often cross the line between calming down the listener and putting them to sleep. It's certainly a thin line, considering chillout artists often pander what are supposed to be floaty, spacey, relaxing sounds.

Air jumped over the line from blissful to boring with 2007's Pocket Symphony, a huge step backwards from 2004's varied and interesting Talkie Walkie. They've started to find their way back across the line on Love 2, but they tread frustratingly back into Boringdom in equal measure. Love 2 starts with two predictably floaty numbers, but by the time you reach the more (dare I say it) "loud" "Be A Bee," things have been saved from becoming too tedious.

But by the time you hit the middle chunk of the album with "Tropical Disease," Love 2 has become lost in its sameness again, and from there on it teeters dangerously over a cliff of endless snooze. Luckily, it's rescued from a tumble by the bouncy "Eat My Beat" just in time.

Love 2 doesn't fall off into disaster as Pocket Symphony did, but it comes close.

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