Jean Michel-Jarre

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.)

How big a celebrity is Jarre in France? Is he say John Tesh famous or maybe Bob Seger famous or perhaps national treasure famous?

National treasure famous, but he toured 15-20,000-seaters last year in both France and the UK, if that's any indication.

there are now 2 'classic albums' boxsets for JMJ, second set just released.
however, they have properly messed things around.
box 1 starts at Magnetic Fields,
box 2 has Oxygene.
neither box has Equinox.
surely they should have just done them in chrono order!?

hats off fgti, that is one of the most dedicated and forgiving rankings of jarre I have seen! putting Chronologie at #2 is definitely an alternate-wormhole act of love I can only admire

moving 'moon machine' back onto main shuffle playlist now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3XRbYLTOWI

Thanks Milton!

Interestingly enough, my stanning for "Chronologie", like my stanning for "Outside", was largely borne out of being in a position of ignorance-of-canon when I got into both Jarre and Bowie. I was 14 and 15 when I got into both artists, respectively, and bought all their stuff all at once. I was, much later, amazed to read that BowieNet ranked, say, "Aladdin Sane" so highly, but didn't give a fuck about "Outside"-- "are Bowie fans deaf?" I thought, "his vocals on Ziggy Stardust sound so nasal and whiny..."-- and I'd blast "I'm Deranged" with my middle finger raised

But yeah same goes for Jarre. I get that the synths got chintzier, the mood became closer to "Les Miserables", but I just had so much more of a teenage emotional response to "Chronologie" (and "Les Chants Magnetiques") than the widely-beloved "Oxygene". We watched Gallipoli in Grade 10 English class, and being the only Jarre fan in town (probably), I told friends "yeah that's not even close to his best song though" and lent them my "Chronologie" cassette

Judging from the comments on RYM, you're not the only one.

Chronologie has always been a favourite with the hardcore Jarre fans (I used to be on the discussion lists back in the day).

Interesting that Metamorphoses is in that new Classics box (with new art, oddly). I wonder if that means it'll finally get a digital release.

i still think AERO is the best way to experience JMJ.
all the best bits in massive wall shaking stereo.

(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.)

I just told this anecdote and Kathryn said “putting the G back in Gallic”

this LP is my favorite Oxygene pastiche:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBAk6NnFOL8

Do hardcore Jarre fans call themselves JarreHeads? (don't look at me, I'm a Philip K. Dick fan)

I am not the first to mention it but Oxygene Pt. 17 should not be overlooked in the trilogy. It very much belongs with it’s forbears.

As noted upthread, the Electronica albums have their moments – I rep for the T. Dream collaboration as it is the last thing Froese released (or first posthumous release I can’t remember). The Air collaboration is also very much everything you would hope it would be given their ancestry.

Also, while it’s amusing that Jarre was sued about the Oxygene re-recording—it does sound awfully close—was that actually proven? Jarre did an extensive interview with Sound on Sound to discuss how he (re-)made that record – and the live DVD (“Live In Your Living Room”) also sounds very, very close (and is quite good). Interview is here: https://www.soundonsound.com/people/jean-michel-jarre

The new Planet Jarre comp looks like it's shaping up to be a bit more interesting than these things usually are. Some unreleased rarities (including one of the tracks from Music For Supermarkets that didn't later turn up on Zoolook or Rendez-Vous), some new bits (Herbalizer is a fun/silly breaks/EDM workout thing), and some new versions of old bits (a studio recording of Magnetic Fields 2 based on the Concerts in China live version, nice new remix of Oxygene 8).

Also, Oxygene 7-13, Metamorphoses and Geometry of Love all popped up on Spotify (and presumably other streaming services) today, so now when I bang the drum for Metamorphoses people can actually go and listen to it.

There's going to be an Equinoxe sequel - Equinoxe Infinity - in November. There's a preview track up on Spotify, it's an OTT bit of sci-fi bombast that doesn't really give much away about the rest of the record. Two different sleeves, which both continue his recent losing streak on the design front, but are magnificently proggy.

Also, Planet Jarre's out today. Track choice and sequencing are excellent - I love the divisions into Soundscapes, Themes, Sequences, Explorations & Early Works which seem designed to add weight to the idea of Jarre as someone with an interesting and varied body of work. But most of the tracks are just faded excerpts - seems a shame that they weren't properly blended or mixed, especially given that there's a bunch of new reworks/remixes on here.

The revised Chronologie 4 has an absolutely dire new MIDI electric guitar solo at the end, btw.

Equinoxe Infinity came out yesterday. My expectations were incredibly low, but actually I was very pleasantly surprised. It's a denser and more substantial piece of work than Oxygene 3, and more understandably more cohesive than the Electronic albums.

A few tracks (mainly Movement 3) are essentially chord changes with aimless soloing on top (a recent habit that really blights some of the remixes on Planet Jarre - Zoolookologie and Chrono 4 spring to mind) but there's some surprises. Movement 6 is full italo disco, and Movement 9 has a surprisingly minimal approach that caught my attention.

Jarre's settled into an interesting groove in the last few years - he's comfortable making essentially retro synthwave with splashes of the classic Oxygene sound palette. None of it will ever be as startling as the original Oxygene-Zoolook run (and I still wish he'd pursued Metamorphoses' train of thought a bit further) but his current stuff is fun and vital (way more so than many of his contemporaries) and sits pretty well alongside modern synthwavers. I hope he maintains this level of output for a bit.

BTW, the Planet Jarre podcast - six episodes of Matt Berry interviewing Jarre - is well worth a listen.

Listening to this now ... thanks for the heads up.

Had a chance to listen to this a few times ... I don't like it as much as Oxygene 3, which was a worthy entry in the trilogy (and had at least 1 classic track) whereas some of this feels like Jarre trying on styles for size. That worked okay for the Electronica albums given the format, but feels a little superficial here.

That said, I agree with most of what you said about this record--would add that in addition to Movement 6, Movement 8 feels pretty italo too--and his career -- a 70 year-old guy has no business doing something like this even half-decently, much less pretty well.

Now on to Metamorphoses ...

A friend and I saw JMJ at the Hydro in Glasgow a couple of years ago and came away feeling he’d possibly spent at least a little bit of the ‘90s at the odd rave and checking out then contemporary dance music.

are there any 70s synth artists still releasing albums yet to avail themselves of the animoog 'descent' preset

Bumped into JMJ on his own at a Carl Cox DJ night at Rex Club in Paris in late 90s. He was wearing an electric blue suit

Bumped into JMJ on his own at a Carl Cox DJ night at Rex Club in Paris in late 90s. He was wearing an electric blue suit

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Wednesday, 21 November 2018 20:32 (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thanks, all the corroboration I needed.

A friend and I saw JMJ at the Hydro in Glasgow a couple of years ago and came away feeling he’d possibly spent at least a little bit of the ‘90s at the odd rave and checking out then contemporary dance music.

I feel that's corroborated by the music isn't it? Chronologie is hardly a dance record but it definitely dips into that palette. And he was pretty quick off the bat with remixes around that time too, Slam, Laurent Garnier etc all doing stuff around that time.

I think 'relevance' is an enduring concern for him. I've got this theory that he's on a 20 year cycle where his stuff dovetails with what's going on in popular (electronic) music - late 70s obvs, late 90s (where he's doing techno-ish analog stuff with hundreds of remixes at the point where analog festishism is really kicking in), and now (synthwave, EDM spectacle). I think whereas a lot of his contemporaries are happy to stick in their bubble, he wants to be where the trends are at, albeit with extremely variable results.

Favourite bit of the Berry-Jarre podcasts is where JMJ is describing how only the first-generation Electro-Harmonix Small Stone phaser pedal had the "silky" sound he likes, and only really when the battery was beginning to die. "Brand new it is too harsh, around 8V it is good, after that it's too weak. You have about an hour where it's good." It's great him re-create the Oxygene sound from just the Eminent 310, plus pedal(s).

I really enjoyed the podcasts. The gear chat is super-nerdy (in a good way) but I enjoyed hearing some of the bonkers live stories as well, like the chaos of the Docklands gig. Apparently he's got an autobiography on the way next year.

I feel that's corroborated by the music isn't it?

― bamboohouses, Friday, 23 November 2018 12:47 (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, definitely, I was being a wee bit glib with my corroboration post. I think it was pretty clear from what he played that night that he'd kept up with developments in electronic music and brought in elements to his own work - I thought it was pretty successful.

Will need to check out the podcasts.

Oh, definitely, I was being a wee bit glib with my corroboration post.

Sorry, I re-read your post and realised I completely misunderstood the point you're making, and came off incredibly sharp there. Apologies!

Wish I'd caught the recent tour. The only time I've seen him was the completely live version of Oxygene at the Royal Albert Hall, which was fantastic.

Really enjoyed those pods with Matt Berry.

Jarre and François De Roubaix must surely have known or been aware of each other, no? You'd imagine even possibly a bit of rivalry.

FDR also had a home studio in Paris (I think) in the early 70s (8 track, apparently). I guess it was the gear around at the time but he's also using a VCS 3, Mini Pops and even running string organs through phasers.

Not to give JMJ a hard time but FDR remains perpetually underacknowledged.

https://youtu.be/DaklmU9HzjQ

(The percussion in that sounds like tapping the side of a cheap condensor mic.)

I have a soft spot for Jean-Michel Jarre. frogbs up the page mentions Sylvester Stallone, which is the kind of genius observation that brings me back to Ilxor every decade or so. Jean Michael Jarre is the Sylvester Stallone of electronic music. You know how some people like to synchronise Pink Floyd's "Echoes" with the last twenty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey? You can do that with the careers of Sylvester Stallone and Jean Michel Jarre, and they line up almost perfectly. Slightly atypical initial hit; competent sequels; return to triumph in the mid-80s followed by rapid commercial decline; occasional attempts at artistic credibility; all ending with surprisingly competent rehashes of earlier ideas.

Think about it. Rendezvous is basically Rocky IV but as a piece of music - it's so bombastic and upbeat! It makes me wish I could go back in time and vote for Ronald Reagan. Revolutions is Rambo: First Blood Part II, slightly grimmer and not very well made although popular. They even begin with the letter R. R. It's not a coincidence.

I've always loved the way Jarre had this obvious burning desire to be taken seriously - along the same lines as Peter Gabriel or David Byrne - so his early albums have these little ambient vignettes and are like gateway drugs to hardcore ambient and systems music. At the same time he was never willing to abandon the mass market and go all the way. In my opinion the title track from Waiting for Cousteau is way up there with Global Communication's 76:14 as the best ambient music from the early 1990s but the album as a whole is dragged down by the television game show themes on side one.

I think Zoolook is his most successful go at crossing over into the high end of the mainstream. It's like liquid dayglo 1980s postmoderism. Memphis furniture design in audio form. But from what I remember it didn't chart very well, and by that time he was competing with e.g. Art of Noise. In my opinion his use of samples was more inventive than Art of Noise but he didn't have Paul Morley phoning up the NME every few minutes so Zoolook tends to be forgotten nowadays. I wonder if the critics disliked the fact he was the good-looking son of a successful composer who had access to masses of equipment; they never felt the need to give him any help.

I'm still impressed with the way that the bassline from Equinoxe V becomes the rhythm of Equinox VI, which turns into an awesome wobbly bass solo at the end, and then becomes the basic track for Equinoxe VII. That must have been very difficult in 1977 with eight-track tape and no MIDI sync. Almost as if he was a classically-trained musician who knew how to plan things out on paper. I think the composed aspect of his music appealed to me as a kid because I grew up with computer game soundtracks. His music was obviously written, not improvised; if you fiddle with the stereo balance control on his early records you can unpick the tracks and see how he built up the music because he used hard left-right panning.

He updated his sound effectively with Magnetic Fields, which sounds a bit like Depeche Mode albeit lusher. He then bought a Fairlight, which means that his 1980s albums sound very dated nowadays. Rendezvous mostly works. Revolutions has its moments, but that was the point when old-wave synth stars of his generation were left behind by acid house and drum'n'bass - the likes of Squarepusher and Autechre and Aphex Twin took up the torch, but they owed nothing to Jan Hammer and Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre etc, they came from a completely different tradition.

I saw him live at Wembley for the Chronologie tour but I barely remember that album; Oxygene 7-13 was okay; Metamorphses felt like a misguided attempt to copy Air; I haven't heard a single note of his music after that. I remember reading that Cousteau was largely generated with software running on an Atari ST; the original recording was hours long, it would be great if it was released at some point.

Maurice Jarre, his dad, also used electronics in some of his 1980s film scores, but they sound nothing alike. Also, Jean Michel Jarre's videos from the 1970s and 1980s are incredibly naff, and his large-scale concerts were shot by Mike Mansfield, who had no visual sense whatsoever. Also I'm drunk and earlier today Shane McGowan got married; he's in his sixties but looks as if he's about to regenerate into the starchild and yet he's a pussy magnet and he outlived Mark E Smith, so who's laughing now?

<< really good post, and I'd co-sign most of it (but I look more fondly on O7-13 and Metamorphoses. One thing I discovered recently though:

I remember reading that Cousteau was largely generated with software running on an Atari ST; the original recording was hours long, it would be great if it was released at some point.

Over the weekend, I read quite an interesting album-by-album interview with Jarre, where he explains that Cousteau was all done by hand in a marathon 24-hour session. Apparently the original is 75 mins (which, as you say, I'd love to hear).

http://domino.elfworld.org/the-journey-to-equinoxe-infinity-part-3-paying-the-piano-player-to-stop-playing/

(Apparently the 22 min version on the LP is a different section to the 45 min version on the CD, but I've never listened to the LP close enough to verify myself.)

the likes of Squarepusher and Autechre and Aphex Twin took up the torch, but they owed nothing to Jan Hammer and Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre etc, they came from a completely different tradition.

Autechre in 2010:

DD: Having been so influential in electronic music, who do you think has influenced yourselves?
Autechre: Well, probably everything we ever heard, but there's some stuff that sticks out. there's not really room to put everything and we probably forgot a ton of stuff, but this would be a pretty good list of stuff we like (roughly in the order we heard them): Jjean Michel Jarre, Giorgio Moroder, Human League, Vangelis, Ultravox, John Carpenter, Kraftwerk, Grace Jones, Juan Atkins, Depeche Mode, Public Enemy, EPMD, Derrick May, Carl Craig, Baby Ford, 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, LFO, Joey Beltram, Mark Broom, RZA, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares... etc, plus some of the stuff below.

I see the ambient/IDM of the early 90s (Biosphere, Autechre, FSOL, Aphex Twin, Namlook et al) musically as a direct descendent of Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Hassell, Roach etc but made by young people for a new generation, those old boomers were never going to be trendy in the 90s electronic music climate.

Revolutions was also v popular sample fodder for a lot of the early Warp crowd. Can't remember which track off the top of my head, but the beat from September is used very prominently in a track on the first Artificial Intelligence comp.

Re his dad. Some of Maurice Jarre’s synth + orchestra scores are wonderful - particularly recommend Solar Crisis. Enemy Mine as well. And Year of Living Dangerously. He had this thing of having like five synthesists playing live together which engendered a cool electronic chamber music feeling. Some of the purely electronic scores are of-their-time nightmares though (eg Dreamscape).

Ashley your post is so interesting!

I myself have had a sweet-tooth for Jarre-as-melodicist, but your assessment of (for example) "En Attendant Cousteau"'s A-side as being "TV-show theme song music" is very real. Chronologie is an album I've always ranked as highly as Oxygène and Zoolook just because... the melodies are insufferably nice. I think I appreciated him more as a pop-writer than as an electronic musician maybe

Love JMJ but, quite honestly, I think De Roubaix, in the short time he made electronic music and with his considerably limited setup, beats Jarre to the punch in terms of the sheer beauty and inventiveness of his work. If only he hadn't loved scuba diving so much.

Having said that - here's a fave JMJ pop production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNuKs_N2c7w

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?"

https://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a6/Sprad/jarreconcertgravity2_zpsm07xvyod.png