Jean Michel-Jarre

*faaarrrrtttttt*

house nation has some words for you

Saw that interview on fb yesterday. It's pretty dope. JMJ def. calls it like he sees it.

New interview he did with Native Instruments promoting his new album-- really good stuff:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/the-journey-of-jean-michel-jarre/?content=3169&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jean-Michel+Jarre+c%3DJean_Michel_Jarre_video+b%3DKomplete+t%3DVideo_PD&utm_source=newsletter

New album, Electronica, is a series of collaborations with folks like Air, John Carpenter(!), Tangerine Dream, Vince Clarke, Massive Attack, and Fuck Buttons (listening to JMJ say "Fuck Buttons" earnestly in his French accent in the interview is all kinds of amazing). As to be expected, some tracks are more interesting than others, but it's def. a pretty fascinating consolidation of his work over the years, from analog to digital and back again (and, as he said in the interview, back yet again with this album).

Worth noting that while the Pete Townshend track is kind of meh, the T. Dream collab is everything you'd hope it would be -- it sounds like something they might have initially done in 1981 and dusted off for this record, with early digital, PPG-like textures and noodley Minimoog horn solos. Hits me right in the sweet spot.

Ok, apologies for the live-blogging, but this record, as intended, does make a pretty credible case for JMJ's influence across a variety of genres. Even the most devoutly house and techno tracks here bear traces of Equinoxe, Magnetic Fields and Zoolook in the way the arpeggiators squiggle about or the string synths pad the walls.

the one i keep coming back to the most is actually the Aero release.
its a really good summation of the best bits, all mixed up together to form a nice 70 minute mixtape, with little in the way of radical reversioning (a little here and there).
that said, the dvd that came with it though was dreadful.
not overly sure re the new album as it has a lot of tracks indicating short pop song structures, whereas and i prefer my JMJ doing his drawn out instrumental epics.
oh, and the collab with little boots i heard was pretty dire.
still, may get it when its a fiver in fopp.

haven't heard Aero but I really want to. I don't rate any of his albums particularly high but there are very good bits on all of them.

What was dreadful about the DVD? 5.1 mix sounds kind of interesting -- and I enjoyed the 5.1 mix of the new Oxygene he did (which sounds 99% like the original).

xxp dunno abt a collab but that standard Little Boots record was the worst thing I've heard in years, I had to review it and oh god I can't even

re the DVD : i dont have a 5.1 set up, so only know the standard visual video album which is basically the album with a film of a moving pair of eyes for 70 mins.
i am sure on a good 5.1 system it will sound amazing, but i still live in the standard 2 channel world.

The Air track on this new one is solid as well. Spotify has a neat little interview with them all about the collaboration: https://open.spotify.com/album/5N53RqYNkM5HmskTRbfabV

I had such low expectations for this after that career-ending dud Teo & Tea, plus you know...collabs with Moby, Tangerine Dream, Vince Clarke, Air Laurie Anderson, John Carpenter etc in 2015 sounds like the dullest thing ever but this is...good! Really good!

list of collaborators on his next one is nuts:

Electronica Vol 2: The Heart Of Noise tracklist:

01. ‘The Heart of Noise Pt. 1 feat. Rone’
02. ‘The Heart of Noise Pt. 2’
03. ‘Brick England feat. Pet Shop Boys’
04. ‘As One feat. Primal Scream’
05. ‘Exit feat. E.S’
06. ‘These Creatures feat. Julia Holter’
07. ‘Here For You feat. Gary Numan’
08. ‘The Architect feat. Jeff Mills’
09. ‘What You Wan feat. Peaches’
10. ‘Circus feat. Siriusmo’
11. ‘Why This, Why That, Why feat. Yello’
12. ‘Switch On Leon feat. The Orb’
13. ‘Gisele feat. Sebastien Tellier’
14. ‘Electrees feat. Hans Zimmer’
15. ‘Swipe To The Right feat. Cyndi Lauper’
16. ‘Walking The Mile feat. Christophe’
17. ‘Falling Down’
18. ‘The Heart of Noise (The Origin)’

http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/19/jean-michel-jarre-electronica-2/

oh man, that Pet Shop Boys track could be very good

I gave the last one a go but his melodic sense is just so corny I couldn't get with it at all.

I kinda like his corny stuff...the long floaty bits are what usually do me in

The best tracks on the last one were with collaborators who do the long floaty bits well. ie, Air. On this one the Orb, Rone and Hans Zimmer tracks are my guess as the standouts.

The collaboration with Tangerine Dream on the last one was like prime Froese as well.

I don't get "corny." His melodies aren't exactly sophisticated but neither are they especially hokey. Which tracks are you referring to?

For me, Jarre's strength is as a sound designer – "Ethnocolour" from Zoolook is perhaps the best example but over most of his career the guy has always had a great feel for the interrelationship of different sounds and how to position them across the stereo spectrum.

huh

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/jean-michel-jarre/oxygene-3/

Yeah, I know :/ I thought that the second Oxygene record was a bad idea itself, as pleasant as it is, it doesn't (and was never going to) come close to the original. I'm curious to hear the new one, but dreading it at the same time. Still, it's nice in a way that all three volumes were released roughly 20 years apart from each other.

Might have to listen to the Oxygene II again b/c I remember it being quite decent. If nothing else it's cool that he brought all the old synths back. Maybe I'm wrong but I remember a lot of his 90's stuff being quite...good, actually?

either way Jarre is in the same phase of his career that Sylvester Stallone is in now, he can keep jamming out sequels and superstar collab albums till the end of time if he wants

Underrated moment on Oxygene: Part III, all of it. Wish it was longer!

Part 17 (!) is actually pretty good. I also like Electronica, Vol.2 a lot. He's having his best year in eons.

I'm just glad he's back - was afraid he'd end his career on the rather abysmal Téo & Téa

Electronica was extremely uneven though, 2 more so than 1. I guess that's inevitable with collabs, but I'm not holding my breath for another Oxygene. He's still able to be really good, but quality control is not his forte.

Listening to Heart of Noise/Vol. 2 now – I probably prefer the first volume but with both of these records I enjoy how Jarre's innate sense of style peeks through the various styles of the collaborators and genres.

This guy's music is only as strong as his everloving chord choices, more than anything it just sounds like he'd do better putting together This Melody and That Chord Progression with a little more attention than he often does

He always suddenly shifts gears into a diminished chord and holds it with a raised eyebrow like "you like that? do you like it when I do that?" and just holds it too long as if a sudden diminished chord is some magical key to building suspense, like an over-confident lover who insists on circling your left nipple with a single finger for far too long

But having listened to Oxygene thru Oxygene 7-13 today, for the first time in 20 years, I can confidently say that I think his oeuvre is better, to my ears, than Kraftwerk's

And to place a challop upon challop, here is my ranking of his "golden era" records, from best to worst-- live albums excluded-- because I find them confusing--

1. Les Chants Magnetiques (best track: the whole thing, but pt. 1 because it's large scale actually works)

2. Chronologie (digital soup, yes, but his best melody writing, best track is easily pt. 4, best track Vangelis never wrote, best track never in an early 90s Future Crew Demoscene nerd demo-- that said my favourite track will forever be pt. 1)

3. Oxygène (best track: pt. 4 obv)

4. Zoolook (best track: as wild and amazing Ethnicolor is, it's the title track; Medulla could never)

5. Rendez-Vous (pt. ?, this was a personal favourite as a kid but I need to re-listen to really decide)

6. Oxygène pt. 7-13 (gorgeously conceived and gorgeously mixed, rather undistinguished but superior to hundreds of present-day throwback analog-synth-noodle-bar projects)

7. Equinoxe (beautiful in tone and colour but insipid in composition, to my ears-- never understood why it was cited as a classic over Les Chants Magnetiques-- I do like the Kraut-y b-side though, pt. 6 is my favourite track here)

8. Revolutions (don't really fuck with this album much but I like London Kid)

9. En Attendant Cousteau (album is drab and sucky, I like Calypso pt. 1 a lot tho, because of its hilarious appearance in Olympic figure skating from time to time)

The fact that this man was married to Charlotte Rampling, dated Isabelle Adjani, and is currently dating Gong Li just makes me feel weird and good

Like this nerd did good for himself, good work sexy French man, you will always be to me what Serge Gainsbourg was to so many others

Kraftwerk never really allow themselves to break out of their deadpan shtick, Jarre otoh really embraces his goofiness, I do like that.

Your description of Jarre switching to dim chord made me irl lol

I think I'd agree with a lot of this. I do really like the title track of Waiting For Cousteau - his only real foray into any kind of Roach/Eno-like drone ambience.

Revolutions is just a demo-reel for the Roland D50, but Tokyo Kid is wonderful.

I periodically think that Zoolook is going to get the widespread rediscovery is deserves, but I guess "Jean Michel Jarre's fourth album" is a tag it may never overcome.

Completely agree on how Oxy7-13 slays a lot of modern analogue synth revivalism.

I'd extend the golden age by a couple of years, because Metamorphoses (1999) is wonderful, and well up there with his best work.

Revolutions was the first Jarre album I bought, back when it came out. It sounds a bit muffled and that's mainly the fault of the D50 I think. Also a lot of the tracks on side one sound like he was writing them intentionally with an eye to performing them Houston/Docklands style. They just sound very 'far away' if that makes sense.

Yeah, I tend to find pseudo-orchestral stuff to be a very dull look for electronica in general. Side A of Revolutions is definitely meant to be a bit of pomp for the lasers'n'fireworks.

yea that's a really good write up. when I first heard Les Chants Magnetiques I had to keep checking the date. 1981? Crazy.

glad you recognize Chronologie as a top JMJ album - I think it's understandable to want to toss out stuff after Zoolook, but that one really is a return to form. I think it'll go down as one of his best.

I still have not heard the two Electronica albums (the concept of which I loved, but the bad reviews kind of broke my heart), nor the latest Oxygene. Maybe now is the time...

Zoolook was my first JMJ album, my never-met-until-age-10-much-older-brother-from-a-previous-marriage dubbed it onto tape for me and I listened to it constantly, and didn't realize until adulthood that this resulted in a very early exposure to Laurie Anderson's voice which I now associate with the jouissance and carelessness of childhood

I'm listening to Ethnicolor again now and like I remember all the silly vocalizations like nothing: "eye-suh! eye-suh!" "dye-yuh-yuh" "welp-me! welp-me!"

Oh shit there's that diminished chord again lol

I just remember one of the hilarious vocal samples is literally a guy saying "where are my liquorice allsorts"

yea for all his accomplishments making a legitimately great Fairlight album has got to be up there

The Electronica albums and Oxygene 3 are all better than the various odds and ends that limped out post-Metamorphoses and all have their moments, but suffer from a lack of focus. The Electronica albums quite often slip into a sort of neon 80s dance-pop that's a bit undistiguished, and O3 doesn't have any of the teeming, organic busyness of the previous two Oxygene albums. He's on the right track though; they're by and large better than a lot of the stuff his contemporaries have been making lately, and it would be nice to see him keep up this rate of productivity as I suspect he may still have another great record in him one day.

Having checked, I think Metamorphoses might be the only one of his albums that's not readily available on streaming / DL services. Such a pity, it's terrific.

What is interesting to me about Jean-Michel Jarre was that he essentially invented a genre of music, this kind of polished French pop sci-fi ridiculousness that seems completely unattached to other genres, the way that Vangelis was attached to New Age, or Giorgio to disco-- he reminds me of Richard James in this regard

I guess the closest reference point I can think of for his music is "composition exercises?" So many of his tracks are like "baby's first experiment with polyphony"

I'm listening to "Second Rendez-Vous" right now and it is so amazing and lol

I love the idea of JMJ stacking up the minor-thirds while raising an eyebrow and saying in a saucy frainche accent 'Oh you like that, do you? Of course you do, you minx...'

He truly is Franch Dressing

A+ revive, thank u fgti for that great writeup

Yeah, that list will be extremely helpful. When Oxygene 3 came out, there was a package with remasters of the first two albums, so I bought the whole thing, but I've never listened to anything else, so now I need to dig around. I doubt he'll ever fully replace Klaus Schulze as my go-to guy for long train rides, but you never know.

one advantage to Jean Michel Jarre is that he never released a 70-CD boxset

Yeah, I tend to find pseudo-orchestral stuff to be a very dull look for electronica in general.

― bamboohouses, Wednesday, March 14, 2018 9:41 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM as hell-- this is why the Vangelisaurus was extincted

JMJ honking on diminished chords is a feature, not a bug. Augmented chords too.

Xpost… I don’t think of Revolutions as a dull sounding record at all. What I like about it is how stupidly on the nose the whole Indutrial Revolutions suite is: grim slog of agrilabour -> building tempo of indutrialistaion -> white heat of techno capitalism –> post capitalism eco disaster/blues keytar solo. Like Koyannisqaatsi reduced to 16 minutes.

Has anyone heard Musique pour Supermarché? Is it true it's quite experimental and difficult?

there is a copy floating around the internet, I think. I heard it once - the sound quality is quite poor - I remember thinking it was like an early version of Zoolook

One of the tracks from Musique made it on to Zoolook, at least: Blah Blah Café

Music for Supermarkets is here and is great - very much a halfway house between Magnetic Fields and Zoolook. (It got a single radio broadcast before it was sold, hence the horrible FM sound quality).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvFK9-2Jmtw

About half of it turns up on later albums - mainly Zoolook, but also Rendezvous. The versions here are completely identical, which does rather cast doubt on Jarre's claims to have destroyed the masters. (Wouldn't be the only time something like this has happened to him either - see also the "30th anniversary re-recording" of Oxygene, which quite reasonably prompted a lawsuit from his former label because it's quite self-evidently from the original master tapes.)

new album called Oxymore just came out. it's a bit low on melody but the overall sound is cool. the only album of his it kind of compares to is Zoolook.

Yeah, I was drawn in by the idea that it's a tribute to Pierre Henry; it's pretty cool, and available in various different mixes (stereo, surround, and a "binaural headphone mix," which is the one I've...obtained).