With Oxygène, Jean-Michel Jarre went to plaster in 1976 with many large record companies. And was rejected: no vocals, the pieces are too long, should that be music? When a small Parisian jazz label finally released the album, it became a huge success internationally with a time delay. Today it is considered a pioneering performance of electronic music. We look back on big acts and falling in the work of the French.
The essential albums by Jean-Michel Jarre
Oxygène (1976)
An album that is outshone by its greatest hit: “Oxygène (Part IV)” – published half a year after the album – was omnipresent in the summer of 1977, the single urge from every loudspeaker. A track in which the impressionist sound aesthetics of Tangerine Dream with the rhythm understanding of Kraftwerk and an wealth of melody unknown in the electronic music of the electronic music. Those who expected more on the album were disappointed. With Oxygène, Jean-Michel Jarre created an atmospheric ambient lead on which he led his past as a sound researcher in an orderly way. The album has sold 18 million times worldwide to this day – not bad for an instrumental album that was rejected by many large record companies.
★★★★★
Équinoxe (1978)
The successor to Oxygène remains in the same track, but Jarre adds a shovel opulence. He presents the entire sound spectrum of the 13 synthesizers, which he played in the recordings: sounds like fanfares against a string -like background, a mysterious sound fog from the sequencer, atmospheric sound surfaces, it bubbles and beeps at all corners and corner. A still fantastic album, in which Jarres later slope to kitsch is already created.
★★★★★
Magnetic Fields (1981)
The 1980s opened Jarre with an album on which he uses an instrument for the first time that will soon dominate the mainstream sound of the decade: the notorious digital synthesizer and sampler Fairlight CMI. With the 18-minute “Magnetic Fields, Pt. 1 “he succeeds in a sprawling electronics symphony, sequencer-driven and rhythm-oriented. In contrast, the cute electric popper “Magnetic Fields, Pt. 2 ”and the Novelty song“ Magnetic Fields, Pt. 5 “.
★★★★★
Amazônia (2021)
An unexpected return to creativity: the music for the multimedia exhibition Amazônia by the Brazilian photographer and filmmaker Sebastião Salgado in the Paris Philharmonic 2021. In 52 minutes, Jean-Michel Jarre tears the ambient genre in all its historical and contemporary forms. The musical journey on the Amazon is illustrated by sparingly used electronic sound areas, from Beats in places where they make sense, of (probably sampled) orchestral passages and natural noises such as bird singing, thunder, rain and the voices of indigenous Amazon residents. Jarre fits these elements into a fragmented but attractive big whole. No bombast, no fireworks, no laser show – just music.
★★★★★
Jean-Michele Jarre: These albums are also good
Zoolook (1984)
Everything new: Jean-Michel Jarre can be accompanied by a band for the first time, with guitarist Adrian Belew (King Crimson, Frank Zappa), bassist Marcus Miller, and Laurie Anderson during a track. And for the first time there are human voices on an album by the synthesizer pioneer, and a lot of it. Samples from 25 languages are manipulated, chopped and felled and a creative element in a music that is increasingly approaching a pop with a strong eighties attack. Zoolook marks a break in Jarres career, the album is the end point of a consistently creative phase that had started with the Oxygène album eight years earlier. This is followed by more shadows than light in the discography of the artist, which of course does not reduce his popularity.
★★★★
Les Granges Brûlées (1973)
The soundtrack for Jean Chapot’s film “Les Granges Brûlées” (German title: “Die Löwin and her hunter”) with Alain Delon and Simone Signoret in the leading roles is a musical hermaphrodite. On the one hand, the album is still strongly rooted in Jean-Michel Jarres Jarres Avantgarde past, and on the other hand, the melodic-hymnic synthesizer figures flash, which become the french of the French a few years later. The step to the next album is huge. It’s called Oxygène.
★★★★
Waiting for Cousteau (1990)
The first three tracks on this homage to marine researchers Jacques-Yves Cousteau can be classified between silly and expressionless. What makes Waiting for Cousteau a good album is the 47-minute title track, which at least plays almost 70 percent of the total playing time. Jarre dares to do something and continues from the extensive environment music to a kind of pointilistic and minimalist ambient, which anticipates the efficiency of Brian Eno’s works from the middle nineties.
★★★★
Oxygène 7-13 (1997)
The curse of a mega-successful album-Mike Oldfield can sing a song about it, or two-is in force to add one or the other sequel. So Jean-Michel Jarre always comes back to his greatest success. And – surprise – the continuation of Oxygène is not that bad. Jarre is able to restore the mood of the 20-year-old original, the light trance technology impact, which is due to the zeitgeist at the time, does not bother.
★★★
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Deserted Palace (1973)
At the end of the 1960s, Jean-Michel Jarre became a student of Pierre Schaeffer, who is considered the co-inventor of the Musique Concrète. Deserted Palace is still strongly influenced by Schaeffer’s experiment spirit. The album with Library Music, Music, which could be licensed for little money as an accompanying for film and television productions, sounds correspondingly diverse. The pieces move between avant -garde, dadaism, suspects of space rock and demonstrations of the performance of the synthesizer.
★★★
Oxygène: New Master Recording (2007)
Another dose of Oxygène for the 30th anniversary of the classic album. The New Master Recording is exactly that, namely a new recording of the six tracks – grade for grade, using the old analog synthesizers, but recorded with the technology of 2007 in 5.1 surround sound. The differences? Marginal. More bass and a clearer sound. The sound fetishists will break out into jubilation. But because the mood of the original remains unaffected, everyone else can ask themselves: does that really have to be? Why buy the copy when the original still exists?
★★★
Équinoxe Infinity (2018)
For the 40th birthday, the album classic Équinoxe also gets a sequel that he did not deserve. It calls herself confidently Équinoxe Infinity, as if it were made forever. But that is not the case. The new tracks are based on the mood of the originals, but never achieve their quality. An album like an urgently attached wallpaper that is supposed to hide a fragile and damp wall in the living room because the landlord has announced his visit.
★★
Finger away from these albums
Electronica 1: The Time Machine (2015)
The artist presents 16 tracks with 15 feature guests, including John Carpenter, Boys Noize, Vince Clarke, Air, the late Tangerine Dream boss Edgar Froese with one of his last recordings and Pete Townshend. It is a crude collection of stylistically incoherent songs and tracks that are in isolation, but are almost unbearable on album length. The equivalent to Jarres megalomanic live shows: a lot of spectacle, but nothing behind it.
★
Published in the ME output 12/22.