Jean Michel-Jarre

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

thanks for that interview link bamboohouses. didn't know about this 1975 track!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRzlF9ahlyY

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.

― bamboohouses, Saturday, 24 November 2018 09:48 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Picked up a cheap copy of 'Magnetic Fields' today, just finished listening to it but not sure what I make of it. Sounds quite 8-bit game music in places!

JMJ's probably the artist who's been on and off my iPod the most, so I decided to grab Planet Jarre to see if it would spark some newfound appreciation of the man's work. It's a really cool compilation, broken up into themes with roughly a single LP's worth of music each, which I guess are like the "continents" on JMJ's planet. Clearly a lot of this was remixed or re-recorded - "Zoolookologie" is such a crazy banger on here - and I think the bigger intention is to show "50 Years of Jean-Michel Jarre" as one continuous body of work, where a track from 1979 can stand up next to something from 2016 or 1985 or 2000 without any overwhelming difference in sound or technique. Very neat but as mentioned by Mr. Houses they really should've put some effort into segueing it all together. I mean half the work's done already. Anyway, turns out Jarre does have a lot of music I really like, what do you know?

me loading all my Jarre stuff back on my iPod

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmQorVNU4AAl14q.jpg

Very neat but as mentioned by Mr. Houses they really should've put some effort into segueing it all together.

as I mentioned earlier : AERO.

a brilliant 70+ minute mixtape of all the best bits in massive widescreen stereo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIeAt5invw0

is this vaporwave?

wow

Today I found Metamorphoses and China on cd for 50p each.
Used to have China on vinyl, but lost it years ago so will be fun to hear that again.
Metamorphoses is indeed a lot better than i expected, the vocals fit well in the music.
in fact, i think i prefer it to Electronica 1 actually.

the track with Fuck Buttons is really great

the Electronica albums are better than they've been given credit for but I really wish they were edited down to 45 minutes apiece. I guess he couldn't go through the trouble of asking someone for a collaboration and not use the final result if it didn't turn out well.

one thing I've always wondered about these albums - Jarre has stated in interviews that he reached out to everyone he considered "important" in the development of electronic music and that they all said yes to working with him, which is why it would up being two separate albums. but if that's the case, then does that mean he never reached out to Ralf Hutter or Florian Schneider, or any of the YMO guys? is there some kind of rivalry there?

Hütter and Schneider never worked with anyone so Jarre probably realized any approach to them would be a waste of time.

Still his guestlist has some odd choices, you can work with nearly everyone and the first people you call are Boyz Noise, Moby and Peaches?

he legitimately loves Moby

and y'know, he probably could've gotten Karl Bartos to do a track, he seems like he would've been into it

still, not reaching out to Scooter was a missed opportunity

they've got a lot in common really

Jean-Michel Jarre - Alone Together VR Concert

Scheduled for Jun 21, 2020, 21:15 UTC+2

rocks

This was a bit of a mess but good fun (stream glitching out, leaving the Ableton click track on - which ironically shows there’s probably a bit more live performance going on here than the miming-to-tale of old).

Lots of new stuff I think? All of it EDM bangers. Not entirely my thing but felt a lot more convincing than some of his earlier attempts at engaging with contemporary dance music.

Aw shit I missed it

alright watching the replay. pretty ridiculous but c'mon this is fun

okay I could only make it so far, not because of the music but rather because it was all glitched out

definitely sounds like something clubby is on its way. hopefully these tracks are still gonna be worked on but I kinda liked what I heard

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

lol I just looked this up and indeed it is *that* Matt Berry. guess I know what I'm doing tomorrow

a shop I was at had a copy of Equinoxe Infinity, so I had to pick it up. only listened to pieces before, it's pretty cool as a whole. it references the original in neat ways - the second half begins with 3 tracks that all have the same bass line just like the original album did. I think it's funny that he's still making music as anthemic and dumb as "The Opening", I kinda love it. downside is the album is so fucking loud. it's got almost no dynamic range which is a disaster for a Jarre album.

If you visit any of the larger Jarre forums (I did it so you don't have to) pretty much all discussion of new/recent releases surrounds the mastering and there's virtually no discussion of the music at all. I hate going all Steve Hoffman, but the latest batch of Sony remasters are truly terrible - weird spatial effects all over Concerts in China, an audible glitch on Chronologie, and a truly abysmal reissue of Rendez Vous where the tape slowed down and sped up. Really grim.

yeah its a shame - I think Oxygene 3 is the worst of the three for that reason alone, he's pushing the right buttons but the pretty/brooding moments shouldn't sound blown out like that.

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).