We’ll begin this life-affirming tale of the authority of truth a year ago in Paris, France. A situation has arisen that’s pitched two sets of friends against one another in less than ideal circumstances: men who need not be able to smell the difference between broth and froth have been brought forth to try and find a lasting peace. Lawyers. For them this is a debate about pieces of paper and numbers and rights, but for at least one of the parties they’re here to represent, far greater themes are at the heart of the quarrel: egotism and greed and deliberate betrayal. A friendship is disintegrating fast.

All, though, is not lost because outside something beautiful is happening. A goose, whose mind has no interest in the dismal going-ons between the set of friends, but whose fortunes are inextricably linked, has laid a golden egg. It is this golden egg that shall become the real hero of our story. Even today, we know not whether it will bring riches, just that it has an exceptional power. That of joy. It brings joy to anyone who holds it.

Now we’ll go back in time to more innocent days filled with youthful dreams of making music and winning success. We’re in Paris still and the sounds of the city are soon to explode onto the international stage. Something unusual will happen the moment they do: for the first time ever, France will earn the right to set the high bar. Their standard of excellence will be the one that musicians in Britain and America, or anywhere in the world, will have to better.

Keen to contribute to the forthcoming flood are two young men called Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. Together they are an electronic-pop duo named Air. When they turn up on the doorstep of a Parisian label, Virgin France, they do so with a knowing smile: already employed by the British-owned company are two friends from their teenage years, Marc Teissier du Cros and Stephane Elfassi. A deal is secured and Marc and Stephane are enthusiastically invited to act as their managers.

The story of Air is a story for someone else to tell. All we need to know is that their music travelled far and at speed. Money became available and with it an opportunity to make good on something that both Air and their managers had dreamed of for years: establishing a record label that was independent from the majors and could release music that ought to be heard, even if it would be harder to digest than the sounds of a band like Daft Punk.

Back even further in time now to the late seventies and early eighties. In a house in a suburb of Paris a young boy is being encouraged by his parents to experiment with music. He starts with the drums and moves on to the many other instruments he finds in his house. It’s a home filled with artistic spirit, but there’s resentment there too. The parents of the child argue often. The atmosphere is volatile and difficult. But there’s support for the obvious abilities of the boy. The father buys a mini home studio, which his son uses to record songs to play to his friends at school. Music has already become his life’s obsession.

The label that Air and their managers founded was named Record Makers and it began life in 1999. By then, the boy with the fighting parents, Sebastien Tellier, was beginning to become known to people in the French music scene. Marc and Stephane first put out a song of his on a Virgin France compilation called Source Rocks and then they, with Air, offered to release a debut full-length album on their new imprint. The album, spectacularly-titled L’Incroyable Vérité, was a Record Makers’ release that Virgin France distributed. But the latter largely ignored it and, no matter that the record contained powerful flashes of the truth it sought to expose, it stalled before it was given a chance to fly.

Those, though, were still good days. Air’s success continued unabated and with it even Sebastien benefited. In 2002, he took off on a world tour as Air’s support act and travelled to places he previously knew only from postcards and pictures he’d seen in magazines. The routines of life on the road bored him, but he became inspired by seeing so much of the world. In his mind he enjoyed comparing the different characters of people he met in the different countries he visited. It amused him to think of them in deliberately simple terms, and to imagine politics as a faceless machine intent upon dividing society and making it hard for some voices to be heard.

Back in France, and Sebastien is beginning to compose songs for a brand new album. He wants, he announces, to continue his search for l’incroyable vérité but also create something that sounds almost unreal – to be layered and dense and have the ability to spark in its listeners different emotions at exactly the same time. It must, he decides, show people his individuality in the most original way he can manage – to be a little crazy, but not too much; to be filled with humour, but not be a joke. He imagines himself to be like one of his heroes, Michael Jackson, perhaps dressed in white and surrounded by children. And he thinks of Robert Wyatt and seeks to rival his music for depth, and Serge Gainsbourg whose soul he will try and match.

To Sebastien Tellier an album is like a book – a story with different chapters and twists in plot. For this album he will remember the way he enjoyed thinking of the people he met on tour – in such crude and comical terms – and all those fun ideas he had about the silenced voices of the world. He will call it Politics, he decides, and one song he will describe as a “cartoon vision of paradisiac Africa”. Another, ‘Mauer’, will be “a cry for help sent out by an ex-athlete from Eastern Germany. The only person who (perhaps) misses the wall because she can no longer play tennis alone.” And there will be a track entitled ‘Ketchup vs Genocide’ in which “young Native Americans shout out their resentment”. That one will be “at the peak of cliché” but allow its composer to choose a side: “the side of the dead Indians”. And he’ll return to Africa and take on civil war, and think of a choir as the alienated voice of labour. The lead vocal on the song will belong to a man who thinks he is free, and all will come together because “whatever happens, everyone ends up in a video-game”.

Sebastien seeks assistance – from his friend Quentin Dupieux (the producer and filmmaker who is also known as Mr Oizo); from the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra; from Tony Allen, legendary drummer of most Fela Kuti bands and a primary creator of what became termed Afro-beat; and from Philippe Zdar, whose studio he uses to compose and record many of the songs. The sessions are a towering success. On May 31, 2003, Sebastien emerges with a completed album and a mighty statement of worldly intent: “Let’s give the minorities their say!” he bellows into a freak hail storm that devastates Paris’s 18th arrondissement that day. “And show the way to those who have forgotten the roots of our planet’s problems! The East Germans should know, and the wetbacks, and those who work themselves into the ground! Say no to stylistic controls, don’t fight the rhythm – Tony Allen will be there to support me along with the rest of them.”

Record Makers are deeply affected by Sebastien’s record. “Our goose has laid a golden egg!” they cry, and they are filled with excitement. In these songs they can sense something  sublime about the city they live in, and they can hear the same magic that Sebastien hears in the songs of Jackson and Stevie Wonder and The Beach Boys. But they know the album is all his. It’s pure, and sweet, and the perfect expression of his wild and imaginative mind. “It must be done justice,” they decide, so they think how to present it to the world. Their friend Alex Courtès is summoned to provide the artwork; to come up with something exceptional that will announce Sebastien as a leader of men. He returns with a hyper-real image in which Sebastien looks as the music sounds: visionary and superb. And he’s smiling too, and you feel ecstasy when you look at him.

Hold tight, though, because for everything that’s holy there must be something evil. Without the means to distribute Politics outside of France, Record Makers approach Virgin UK and Parlophone Records in London. Both refuse it. “It’s a minor inconvenience,” Record Makers think, but worse is still to come. Air are beginning to change their mind about who they want to manage them, and who should put out their music, and whether, even, they still want to be part of the label they’ve established with the friends they’ve held since their teenage years. And so it was, in June 2004, with Sebastien’s golden egg yet to take flight outside of France, Air sack Marc and Stephane from managing them, and all hell breaks loose.

We’re back now in that room in Paris full of men who need not be able to smell the difference between broth and froth. Their conversations we’ll leave alone to tell you about something far more remarkable. The egg, it’s hatched a gosling! A golden gosling! And look, see how it takes flight alone! And without permission! It’s like the East German tennis player! And the young Native Americans! It cannot be silenced and it’s refusing to be maimed! And it’s flying to Britain now! And it’s delivering a message of joy! And people are listening! They’re pulling over to the sides of roads and weeping! They are saying that it is the most beautiful thing of the last 15 years!

Oh, how heartening it is to know that truth can still transcend the complications of modern life. The gosling’s name is ‘La Ritournelle’, or, “the only love song”, and it seemed destined to remain immobile until the lawyers had found their peace. But, for over a year now, copies have been sneaking into Britain and performing a magnificent task: that of uniting people. Nobody has managed to claim the song for themselves because the song was always intended for everyone. “If I manage to write a good song,” Sebastien says, “I think people imagine exactly the things I want them to. I have this ability to make something sound one-directional – to be only as I want it to be. People say to me that they think ‘La Ritournelle’ is beautiful. That is because the song is a victory for me. It was never meant to be anything else.”

It was at Record Makers HQ – a converted bakery in a lost corner of Paris, where the mad ask to be left alone by someone that no one else can see and transvestites feel free to walk the streets without being abused – that we were told the story of The Goose with the Golden Egg, and how its gosling took flight alone. And it’s a story that has a happy ending because Marc and Stephane fought their way out of the disagreement with Air, and ended up with full ownership of the Record Makers label. Sebastien is signed exclusively to them, as indeed he should be. He inspires them, and they he.

And for us here in Britain who have waited so patiently for the golden egg to become readily available, there is good news too. Free at last to sort out a distribution deal with a like-minded British label, Marc and Stephane contacted Lucky Numbers Music, who, almost two years after the French first heard Politics and its bewitching gosling, have just officially released both – as an album and a single – and, by doing so, understand well that they are unleashing something wonderful.