Jarre-ing experiences

Growing up in the early 80s I was aware of synthesized sound. I don’t know why I found the bloops interesting - perhaps it was the common presence of “synthetic electronic sound” in science fiction TV shows that resonated with me. Or maybe it was because these sounds weren’t ordinary and everyday. Older people seemed to find electronic sounds cold and alienating, but for me they were (and are) beguiling.

Though I was aware of the early 80s synth pop boom to some degree (I certainly remember when Don’t You Want Me (1981) and Blue Monday (1983) came out, I was more focused on electronic musical cues from Doctor Who, or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, or indeed from Vangelis’ ubiquitous 1981 synth hit Chariots of Fire. (I was especially impressed by how Vangelis’ studio setup had him besieged by keyboards.) But more than any of these things, my most vivid experience of this music was what played on TV whenever our local television transmitter lost its upstream feed (something that happened at that time more often than you’d think). This anonymous soundtrack featured a cascade of electronic sound which I found captivating and mysterious at the age of I dunno, somewhere between 6 and 8.

I don’t want to over-emphasise these experiences - children are fleetingly interested in lots of things. But there was something about it that persisted over time, even if in a minor way compared to say cricket or Asterix. Still, as the 80s rumbled on I really dug the Art of Noise’s Close to the Edit (1984), and Paul Hardcastle’s Nineteen (1985). (I wasn’t quite so taken by Yello’s Oh Yeah though.) Pump up the Volume (1987) was also a revelation (though possibly more for the royalty free Nasa footage used in the video than its pioneering house-in-the-charts sound).

In any event, it seems I was primed in some way when, in 1990, I saw a cheesy ad on TV for Synthesiser Greatest (volume 1), a collection of synth hits distributed in my homeland by the cheap and cheerful Dino Records. The ad featured a tune I recognised from the TV transmitter breakdown music. I had never bought music before, but I was sufficiently moved to buy this compilation. And so it was, on my 15th birthday, I acquired Synthesizer Greatest on cassette.

The album, as I discovered later, featured covers only (boo!) by a Dutchman going by the name Ed Starink. (I thought this name was an embarrassing pseudonym, but apparently it isn’t?!) The vibe of the enterprise was pretty cheap and cheesy, and I wouldn’t say it was the sort of thing I’d buy now (or even a year after I bought it). To be fair the quality of the covers was actually pretty solid, but the comp is more valuable as a starting point for further research. Here’s a list of some of the tracks:

• Autobahn (Kraftwerk)
• Moments in Love (Art of Noise)
• Electricity (OMD)
• Pulstar (Vangelis)
• Oxygene part IV (Jarre)
• Crockett’s Theme (Hammer)

Solid.

Let’s give it up for Synthesizer Greatest. clap clap clap

I discoverd a track called Oxygene part IV was the music I recognised from the “broken transmitter soundtrack”, and the composer’s name was Jean Michel Jarre. I wanted to hear more, and over the next couple of years I obtained (new, second hand, or cough dubbed onto tape) around ten Jarre albums. This exploration was my first serious delving into electronic music (and into “pop” music, really), so was significant for developing my musical taste. In the years since I’ve broadened and deepened my understanding, obviously.

Digression: that’s what I call not-now music

Before we get to the subject at hand, it’s worth pausing to wonder why I was off on this hunt for out-of-date music rather than, say, digging through crates of white label vinyl at the freshest record shop in town, like any self-respecting electronica-focussed teen would done? Or to put it another way, why the idiosyncratic exploration of sounds I’d heard 10 years earlier? Well, part of the answer is I wasn’t really aware of the contemporary electronic scene at the time. My immediate social circle was obsessed with goth and indie rock, of nearly the same vintage of Jarre’s heyday. Others were listening to Led Zeppelin with the same fervour as Nirvana… In any event I didn’t really interact with contemporary electronica until I reached university.

Slightly embarrassing to be sitting out the elecronic dance revolution in the early 90s? Well, maybe… but I guess cosmically speaking it probably isn’t that important. Right?

Well, with that expression of shame and regret out of the way, let’s move on to the works of Jean Michel Jarre!

Oxygene (1976)

Oxygene wasn’t the first Jarre album I heard, but it makes more sense to start here.

So, it’s the middle of 1991 and I’m interested in picking up Oxygene. It’s reasonably easy to find Oxygene in record shops, and I have two choices: obtain it on cassette tape for $19.95, or CD for around $33, $34. Or buy a classical music cassette for as low as $10 (synth music wasn’t the only thing I was into at the time). My financial resources at the time were feeble (taught me the value of money, so it did) so I was in a quite a quandry. Eventually curiosity got the better of me, and I resolved to buy Oxygene.

I still get misty eyed remembering that day in August 1991. It was a sunny Wednesday and I caught the lunch time train from school into town for an orthodontist appointment, and delayed my return to education by a few minutes in order to duck into the nearest music shop (of which there were many back then) and buy Oxygene. Braces tightened, teeth hurting, I executed my musical purchase and sprinted back to the station in time for the next train. Once safely onboard, I placed the tape into my budget Walkman (no Dolby B noise reduction, but it did have a three band equaliser), and listened through the first side. I remember being both mystically entranced and relieved I was enjoying it. Unfortunately class got in the way of listening all the way through; so I had to wait until I got home. Side two proved to be as captivating as side 1. Jarre got a fan for life that day.

Oxygene part 1 starts with a genial cyclical burble of synths through echoes. Eventually the bubbling subsides into a subdued, eerie thereminesque theme. The initial burble returns to facilitate the transition into Part II. Overall part I is a fairly straightforward mood piece, but it sets the scene well.

Part II commences with a repeating sequencer line that builds into a crescendo of urgency, before yielding to a dramatic melody, punctuated by echoed sine wobbles from a VCS3. I was delighted to hear this as it’s another tune I remember from TV transmitter breakdown interludes. After the first melody, the track shifts into another theme, which thunders away emphatically with a bit of noodly soloing, until the track fades away into a slow up-and-down sweep of white noise through a Small Stone phaser, perhaps the most iconic effect on Jarre’s first two albums. Part III is a more sedate, almost oriental-sounding piece, which ends with a field recording of birdsong. This brings side 1 to a serene conclusion.

Oxygene part IV I already knew from Synthesizer Greatest. I learned a lot later that in composing the Jarre just slowed down Hot Butter’s Popcorn, to contrive futuristic synth majesty. Oxygene V starts with what a slow refrain reminiscent of church music. The chords are slightly ponderous, and are eventually replaced with the same theme sped up, with a bit of moog brassy soloing that sounds reminiscent of Ravel’s Bolero. This slow then fast structure is suspiciously reminiscent of Kometenmelodie I and II from Kraftwerk’s Autobahn album which came out a couple of years earlier. Concidence?

The album’s finale is part VI, a track whose arrangement screams “cheesy French lounge music”, on a beach, with synth seagulls. Because it’s played minor-key straight, though, it works, weirdly enough. It’s an very open-ended, ambiguous conclusion to the album, and it’s a good choice.

Waxing lyrical

Where to start? There are two primary sources of genius for Oxygene: the sound and the structure.

The sound is incredibly crisp and precise, and clear - despite being recorded in Jarre’s kitchen rather than in a professional studio. The relative gain levels between the instruments are expertly balanced both in gain and stereo space. Finally, as icing on the cake, there’s Jarre’s winning choice of Michel Granger’s surreal painting for the album cover.

From the beginning, the sound world of Oxygene has always been for me a crepuscular world of stone, sky, wood, and water, devoid of people. It’s the sound of the planet before humans evolved, or the planet that will exist after we’re gone. To continue the pseudo-poetic vein, it’s the sound you might hear if you could only strip away the overlying noise of human fuss.

Let’s move from flowery phrasery to the album’s structure. The album’s parts feel carefully constructed and balanced to enhance each other:

• Part I introduces the sound world
• Part II adds drama
• Part III relaxes the mood and adds contrast
• Part IV restarts proceedings and functions as the heart of the album
• Part V begins as a languid change of pace, before stepping up a gear and providing a bit of arcadian longing
• Part VI provides a muted “come-down” to conclude the album.

Not only does this sequence of trakcs provide a good variety of moods, each part serves to both contrast and build upon the preceding parts. The continuous mix (aside from the gap between side 1 and 2) only enhance this sense of continuity and wholeness. The album feels like a journey.

Now I’ll concede that a contemporary first time listener might not have such a vivid experience with the album. And at the time of its release there were plenty of critics who felt Jarre’s concoction was slight, facile, cold, and emotionless. I reckon they got it wrong; in fact I reckon that Oxygene is the most quintessential document of 70s electronica. There are other albums I think were more important and influential, but if you had to pick one that best utilises the range and techniques of 70s analogue hardware, Oxygene is my pick.

Oxygene back cover. Oui, oui, d'accord

Jarre’s prehistory

Before we go further, it’s worth dicussing just where Jarre appeared from. He was in his late 20s at the time of Oxygene, so what had happened before that? Well, he spent his youth first being the estranged but well-funded son of oscar-winning film composer Maurice Jarre. In the late 60s he studied electronic music under Pierre Schaffer. He migrated from the academic world to the more prosaic world of advertising jingles, accumulating gear. In 1973 he released two albums. One was a set of stock music, the other a film soundtrack.

I didn’t get to hear these albums until the 2010s. I can report they’re pretty average - standard electronic fare for the time, and not compelling enough for a second listen. Sort of “novelty” bleep bloop stuff. The banality of these albums only serve to enhance Jarre’s achievement with Oxygene. I’m curious to know what changed in Jarre’s compositional outlook between Les Granges Brûlées in 1973, and Oxygene three years later. Was Oxygene as intentional as it seems listening to it now, or was the result more of a happy accident, where the six tracks just happened to work together so well? What’s more, legend (or at least, Jarre) has it the album was self-produced by Jarre and recorded in his kitchen in six weeks on an 8 track recorder (not terrible for the time but not state of the art). How does it sound so good that upon original release it was regularly used by audio obsessives to test out hi fi systems? I’m inclined to believe it was a combination of talent, experience with the equipment, and a very careful and judicious arrangement.

Embarrassing music video

Jarre’s videography is pretty eyewatering, and worth documenting here, for shits and giggles. Here’s his debut!

He began as he meant to go on.

Equinoxe (1978)

Since Oxygene had proven an excellent purchase, I quickly resolved to buy Jarre’s followup, Equinoxe. I obtained it the afternoon before I went up country on a trip with my history class. While coach loudspeakers blared out Bob Marley, I cranked up my Walkman and witnessed Equinoxe for the first time. (Incidentally I’ve held a grudge against Marley fans and boycotted his music ever since - even though I realise it’s hardly his fault. But I’m sure you’ll agree that things that happen at high school really stay with you.)

Equinoxe Part I is a major key fanfare realised through frenzied arpeggiation. It is a more confident, emphatic, and bombastic start to an album than Oxygene’s part I. Part II, a haunted phased soundscape, is much more restrained. Part III kicks off as a rather lovely waltz, which soon decays into a some sonic brooding and bubbling, before Part IV kicks off with much sturm and drang. This part was the album’s most exciting discovery for me; in the early 80s it was used as the title music for a long-running nature documentary series in my country. Finding out this piece was by Jarre was definitely a eureka moment.

Side two begins with Part V, which I’d heard before on Synthesizer Greatest. It’s very much the album’s single: jaunty, cheerful, ushering us towards our Glorious Utopian Future. It’s decent, but doesn’t have the mysteriy of Oxygene IV, though. Part VI is a continuation of Part V’s tempo, and is charming in a burbly, techno futuristic sort of way.

Part VII starts off with a nice piece of sequenced synth bass work. (It’s worth mentioning that for Equinoxe Jarre collborated with engineer Michel Geiss, who built a custom digital sequencer for the project. As a result Equinoxe is definitely more rhythmically propulsive than Oxygene.) The piece develops into an lengthy and slightly underdeveloped workout that doesn’t quite justify its length. Eventually the rhythm, which hasn’t relented since Part V began, eases away. Part VIII starts out with synthetic rendering of an “oompah” band playing in a thunderstorm - quirky choice, that - before recapitulating Part V’s theme in a churchy kind of way. The album concludes with a kind of heavenly Amen.

Up to part VII Equinoxe matched Oxygene in terms of quality; the only detracting point being that the album cleaves very closely to Oxygene’s template, and so isn’t as original. (That doesn’t particularly bother me; not every album has to be a significant development on the last.) Unfortunately, however, parts VII and VIII don’t quite see the album out with the same tight focus. In fact the album rather meanders to its conclusion. It’s not enough to derail the whole work, but it is a shame Jarre ran out of inspiration on the home strait.

As for my school trip, Equinoxe was the highlight - well, that and getting a chance to have a chat with a girl I fancied. To be fair the opportunity was wonderful, but I fear I squandered it by boasting about how much weetbix I could eat. Shame bro!

Embarrassing music video

Oof. But credit where credit’s due, he’s wearing a hell of a cravat.

Magnetic Fields (1981)

Magnetic Fields found Jarre at something of a crossroads. Equinoxe was a play-it-safe sequel to Oxygene, but by 1981 the electronic music landscape had changed a lot. Understandably, for his next album, Jarre looked to innovate by obtaining a Fairlight CMI, a fabulously expensive and very much way-of-the-future digital sampler. His collaboration with Michel Geiss continued, leading to even more complex arrangements.

The first side of Magnetic Fields is taken up by Magnetic Fields part I. In truth Part I is actually three tracks: an initial urgent introduction that gives an impression of relentless motion, followed by an interlude of floating music concrete, followed by another minor key gallop to the side’s conclusion. Unfortunately Part I is nowhere near as engaging as the first sides of Oxygene or Equinoxe.

Side two begins, as usual, with a single, the rambunctious Magnetic Fields part II. The track is the first Jarre number to feature percussion up loud in the mix. It’s not a bad track, but it lacks the majestic transcendance of Oxygene IV, or the cheery utopia of Equinoxe part V. Worryingly for Jarre, the version on Synthesizer Greatest is actually arranged better (shoutout to my man Ed Starink!).

For me the best track on the album is Magnetic Fields part III. It’s a relatively straightforward mix of spiralling arpeggios, water sploshing, slick synth bass and what could be a slowed thumb piano loop. It’s nice.

Part IV is a sort of limp anthem that plods away for a while, modulates into minor key for a further while, and kind of slinks away with a field recording of a train. A bit like Equinoxe part VII it’s not bad, but just not that interesting.

If Part IV is lacklustre, Part V (named on a later Jarre compilation as “The Last Rumba”) is, like Oxygene Part VI, a lounge music excursion. But while its predecessor has a contemplative, even melancholic tone, The Last Rumba is profoundly cheesy, and doesn’t bear repeated listening.

Well, how to sum all that up? Jarre clearly wanted to innovate, but it didn’t really work out. The complex layered sequences sound muddy compared to the clarity of Oxygene and Equinoxe. The Fairlight only recognisably appears on two tracks, and isn’t greatly utilised. Just to be cruel, compare Marnetic Fields another album released in 1981: Kraftwerk’s Computerworld. On Computerworld Kraftwerk invented techno. Magnetic Fields, however, proved to be a stylistic dead end.

Embarrassing music video

Embarrassing, yes, but an improvement on before.

Zoolook (1984)

Zoolook was the first Jarre album I listened to, obtaining it on CD from my local library in early 1991. It’s perhaps not the most appropriate introduction to Jarre’s music, but in a way that makes it a more interesting starting point. Although on first listen it was very apparent to me “this ain’t no Oxygene IV!”, I was immediately captivated by the album.

Making Zoolook, Jarre had another crack reinventing his sound, including collaborating with muscians for the first time (collaborations as unexpected as Laurie Anderson and Adrian Belew). The Fairlight CMI, used somewhat timidly on Magnetic Fields, was front and centre on Zoolook. (Apparently the first version of the Fairlight didn’t have a sequencer, and this may account for its limited use on the earlier album, and greater prominence here.) Also in contrast to earlier albums, the primary musical medium of Zoolook is the human voice, sampled and processed.

The first track, Ethnicolor, is a psychedelic, Vangelistic (Vangelisian?) excursion quite unlike anything Jarre had produced before. The clarity of arrangement makes a welcome return, the digital sampling and recording technology used on the album providing a crisper frequency response than Magnetic Fields’ wall of low-pass-filtered arpeggiating synths. The sound palette is further expanded with live drums passed through gated reverb in classic mid-80s style. Slap bass even makes an appearance, and surprisingly it actually works. The only downside to the track is that the early melody is played through a vocal sample that sounds like “tit”, an embarrassing and obvious gaffe which schoolboy me found hard to take. 30 years later: shrug.

The next track, Diva, featured Laurie Anderson on vocals, and begins with a languorous introduction, followed by a more frenetic workout propped up by african-style drumming and guitar. Anderson’s voice outputs glossallalia that is by turns seductive and manic. The result is, once again, excellent.

There follows the title track, a piece of excellent synth funk(!), to my ears reminiscent (but legally distinct, you understand) of Herbie Hancock’s Rockit (cough even down to the music video).

Then there’s the atmospheric Dreamtime evocation of Woolloomooloo. I actually think it’s one of Jarre’s best tracks. Just really well realised.

After that comes Zoolookologie, a fizzing pop track which zings away happily, its only blemish being a recapitulation of that distracting “tit” sample from Ethnicolor.

Heading into the home straight, there’s Blah Blah Cafe, a stomping piece of silliness, that has a similar function to The Last Rumba on Magnetic Fields, only it isn’t fucking terrible.

The final track is the grave, contemplative Ethnicolor II, which is the perfect sendoff for the album.

Zoolook is - to me at least - Jarre’s second best album after Oxygene. What I admire most about it is that Jarre completely reinvented his sound and approach, and the gamble pays off.

Influences?

Jarre studied at IRCAM in the late 1960s with Pierre Schaeffer, and I’d always assumed that Zoolook was the result of Jarre picking up that thread of his life again. But recently I had a listen through Talking Heads’ catalogue, and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps another influence is David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. This splendidly innovative album is a blend of african rhythms, funk, found-sound recordings of human voices. Sound familiar?

The materials might be similar, but the style of the two albums are. My Life in the Book of Ghosts is skin-of-teeth experimental, a bewildering, kaleidoscopic maelstrom of sound. Zoolook is much cleaner - frosty almost - and much more mannered. But if you were looking for an explanation for Jarre’s change of direction between Magnetic Fields and Zoolook, it’s plausibly My Life in the Bush of Ghosts-shaped.

(I should say that Jarre is of course allowed to be influenced by anything he likes, and there’s absolutely nothing in Zoolook that plagiarises My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. And it’s also possible Jarre hadn’t heard the album, or that there were other, more direct influences on Zoolook. None of that’s going to stop me idly speculating, though.)

Embarrassing music videos

This is actually not too bad, so as a bonus, here’s one that’s much worse:

DID YOU KNOW THIS WAS MADE IN THE 1980s?

Rendez-Vous (1986)

With Zoolook marking a much-needed fresh start to Jarre’s career, his next album capitalised on this by creating a remarkable fusion of jazz and ambient electronica which both looked back to Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, and forward to the 90s ambient movement.

Well, that’s the album I’d like for him to have made. But he didn’t. In fact, what happened next (repeatedly, for 10 years!) was pretty dire.

Houston calling

Rendez-Vous has a bit of a backstory you need to understand before we can discuss it, so settle in! It all started when Jarre was invited to perform in Houston for a celebration of 25 years of Nasa and 150 years of Texas. In its final form, the performance was to be played in front of a massive audience, with a light show beamed across skyscrapers in the centre of Houston.

This scenario might seem a bit random for Jarre, but that’s because I’ve neglected to mention Jarre’s concert exploits. His first concert occurred on Bastille Day 1979, when he performed in Paris to an audience of 1 million, putting him into the Guinness Book of Records. Solid start… Then in 1981 he gave a series of concerts in China, notable for being the first western performances in China since the Cultural Revolution. These experiences made Jarre more than credible as a booking option for the Houston concert. Perhaps Houston natives ZZ Top would have been more appropriate, but for whatever reason, Jarre ended up with the gig.

For the concert, called Rendez-Vous Houston, Jarre went all-in, producing a new album (also called Rendez-Vous) specially for the event. He also worked with astronaut and saxonphonist Ron McNair to prepare a piece McNair would record while in orbit on the space shuttle. Tragically, McNair died in the Challenger disaster in January 1986. A desolated Jarre wanted to pull the plug on the project, but was persuaded to continue. As if that wasn’t enough trouble, the concert perparation and performance was plagued with problems. In the end though the concert was deemed a success, and Jarre was able to advance his personal concert attendance record from 1 to 1.3 million people.

A massive digression regarding authenticity in Jarre’s live performances

When I turned 17 I shelled out for a VHS tape of Jarre’s Houston performance (I think it was about $40 - oh the extravagance!). Now it may be a function of the video edit but what Jarre appeared to be doing on stage had no correlation to the music, and it left leaving me wondering if he was merely pretending. To be fair, the vid does suggest Jarre’s semi-circular keyboard controlled the lighting in some way, but the fact it was shaped like a keyboard with keys kind of implied it would make sound. Similarly, when Jarre was supposedly playing a “laser harp” - a way of triggering a synthesiser by interrupting a laser beam - his “performance” didn’t quite match the notes.

So what gives? Well, taken in its most negative light (a view held by the normally genial UK comedian Bill Bailey, Jean Michel Jarre “is a fraud” (as Bailey would have it). I don’t think this is quite the case. I don’t entirely let Jarre off the hook, but I think there are mitigating factors.

For starters it’s difficult to replicate a multitrack recording live, esp with the limitations of 80s synth hardware. There’s one strategy that could work: create a new mix from the original multitrack including some tracks but omit others, and have musicians perform those parts. A good example of this is Depeche Mode’s 101 concert, Fletch’s uncertain contributions not withstanding.) From the Rendez-vous concert it seems some performers were present, though it’s uncertain whether they were there for show. Finding the video a bit suspect because of its editing, I went to the trouble of listening to the FM simulcast of the Houston concert, and found that much of what is broadcast is tracks lifted verbatim from Jarre’s back catalogue. The most charitable interpretation one can make from this is that Jarre focussed on performing the Rendez-Vous tracks and faked it till he made it with older ones.

OK, so this evidence is fairly damning with regards to fraud, but there’s more than one way to evaluate the evidence. Consider, for example, the practicality of organising a performance with all the instrumentation needed to replicate Jarre’s back catalogue with live performers. It’s one thing for the Stones to jangle away with their rock instruments, another to assemble an orchestra of synths and their operators.

Jarre’s 1981 concerts in China provide evidence to back up my claim. The tracks were performed live (or at least with sufficiently different arrangements to their studio versions), and the sound is much less fleshed out, and that’s even with the overdubs Jarre felt compelled to add to the concert album. It’s possible that Jarre decided not to repeat this with Rendez-Vous Houston.

And there are other factors. Unlike the Concerts in China, Rendez-Vous Houston was a one off, so there was less incentive to be live for a single concert than there would be for multi-date tour. Also Jarre may also have simply not had the time or budget to organise a genuinely live performance. Finally, the reality of the Houston concert is that it was primarily about spectable, and music was very much secondary to the light show. Having an accompanying concert might have been important, but for an average punter, how the sound got generated (and especially who composed it) was probably of little or no interest.

But that’s middle aged me’s opinion. 17-year-old me was profoundly disapppointed by Jarre showboating when he wasn’t doing anything. How embarassing.

That puts paid to the Rendez-Vous Houston performance, but Jarre’s career moved on from there, and in the early 2000s he released Oxygene: Live in Your Living Room, a performance of Oxygene with the entire original arrangement recreated with multiple performers and innumerable synths. It’s a great idea and from what I’ve seen of it, seems entirely legit. I’m tempted to say that the project is a rebuttal to earlier suspicion and criticism, but I honestly don’t know. I’m not sure it’s entirely redemptive, but it’s good that he did it.

Rendezvous with Rendez-Vous

Finally we come Rendez-Vous the album. It’s a slight nod to the past (coming ten years after the release of Oxygene, it uses a new Michel Grainger painting on its cover, and features 6 parts like Oxygene does). But unlike the later Oxygene 7-13 album, the music and tone is unrelated to Oxygene, or to Zoolook. Instead of sample-based sound, Rendez-Vous relies on mid 80s digital synths, which have a fairly brittle sound. The airless arrangement is not helped by a new stylistic choice: bombast. Now ok, there had been somewhat operatic moments of drama in Jarre’s earlier work, but heretofore it had been reasonably well executed. The early parts of Rendez-Vous go truly over the top, and not in a good way. But the most egregious horror is the saccharine Fourth Rendez-Vous. I first heard this track on Synthesizer Greatest and I thought it a bit trite (or as trite as a 15 year old can find anything). The real version did not sound any better.

The only track on the album that I find reasonably decent is the closer, Final Rendez-Vous. This is the track that was to feature Ron McNair’s saxophone. In his honour the track is subtitled Ron’s Theme. It’s an effective track, if more lachrymose than I’d prefer; it’s difficult to tell whether this was the arrangement as orginally intended before McNair’s death, or if Jarre later amped up the misery.

Why is Rendez-vous so bad, and why did Jarre turn his back on the creatively rich sound world of Zoolook? There’s so many possible reasons: synth technology was evolving rapidly in the mid 80s, and perhaps Jarre wanted to tinker with new toys that, in retrospect, didn’t sound as good. Perhaps Zoolook had been costly to produce, and/or wasn’t as commericially successful as previous albums, forcing a stylistic rethink. Perhaps he was simply pushed for time producing Rendez-Vous for the Houston concert, and corners were cut with production. Regardless of what I might speculate, the album sold 3 million copies and - lamentably - set the tone for the three albums.

Embarrassing music video

So bad.

Revolutions (1988)

Revolutions is something of a retread of Rendez-Vous. The concept this time is social, political, and technological revolutions. This seems like a rich starting point, and the album certainly tries to cover a lot of ground. The sound is a much more developed this time, with arguably the best percussion patterns (and sounds) of Jarre’s career.

So that’s all good. But he can’t let go of that bombast, and there’s clearly an eye to another concert (this time the comparatively under-attended 1988 Destination Docklands performance.

Revolutions is not great, but there is one unreservedly decent track: the uneasy and saxy Tokyo Kid. In keeping with the Japanese theme, I think this piece would be quite at home on the soundtrack of a dystopian anime like Akira or Ghost in the Shell - excessive praise, perhaps, but I think it’s justified.

But the rest of the album… ugh. The nadir is September, a tribute to an ANC activist assassinated in Paris in 1988. The tribute idea is of course perfectly decent, but the tune is so sugary (and features a children’s choir, ffs) it’s impossible to take.

Embarrassing music video

Ugh.

Waiting for Cousteau (1990)

A tribute to scuba-diving mariner Jacques Cousteau, side one features something no one asked for: Jarre’s take on Calypso music (quelle horreur!). Side 2 features the long, ambient title track, which is pretty decent, if derivative of Brian Eno’s dreary Thursday Afternoon-style ambience.

Not embarrassing music video

Music’s not great, but give it up for the animators!

Chronologie (1993)

Chronologie (a concept album about Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of time, apparently) is an improvement on Waiting for Cousteau, but nowhere near Jarre’s best. There’s a few half-hearted nods to contemporary electronic dance, but otherwise it’s all business-as-usual.

I have fonder feelings towards this album than perhaps I should, because I bought it in Australia on my first visit there, and hearing it reminds me of a happy holiday.

Embarassing music video

More boring than embarrassing, really, save for the moment where Jarre spins around to face the camera in a manner reminiscent of Garth Marenghi.

Oxygene 7-13 (1997)

Jarre didn’t release any new material for four years and I largely moved on from him to other electronica pastures. But when I discovered Oxygene 7-13 in a record shop in 1997, I was sufficiently curious to obtain it.

Brought out for the 20th anniversary of Oxygene, the new instalment was a return to that sound world, with Jarre utilising (mostly) the same synthesizers.

The first track (part VII, continuing on from the six parts of the original album), is an absolute tour de force, one of the best tracks Jarre has produced. Listening to it the first time felt a bit like witnessing the return of the Prodigal Son (“Jesus, Jean Michel, where were you?”). Part VIII is the obligatory single in the vein of Oxygene part IV: it’s not terrible, but a bit arthritic for the age in which it was produced.

The rest of the album doesn’t have the same vitality, but isn’t bad by any means, and Oxygene 7 - 13 must overall be considered a return to genuine form. And yet, well, when you get down to it musical sequels are by definition creatively redundant, a bit self-indulgent, and maybe even a kind of lazy. Also, Jarre had already produced an Oxygene sequel in the form of Equinoxe, so why go back there in 1997, or again in 2016, with Oxygene 3? To use nostalgia to generate sales, I fear. Certainly worked on me!

Not embarrassing music video

No embarrassment in this video, but not much of anything else, either.

The latter years

Perhaps five years ago I gave Jarre’s 2000s work a cursory listen through on Spotify. I both don’t remember and didn’t think very much of it. Then came the two-volume Electronica compilation: a series of collaborations with other electronic luminaries. If you’re feeling charitable, such a project is an admirable piece of outreach and limelight sharing; more cynically it could be viewed as a waning talent collaborating to maintain relevancy.

In recent years, however, Jarre has experienced a relative renaissance, largely nostaliga-powered: Equinoxe Infinity is actually pretty listenable, and Oxygene 3, while a bit dour, is decent enough. But for me the stand out album of the past three (nearly four) decades is the 2021 album Amazonia. Orignally constructed as background music for a photographic exhibition, it’s a vivid and revelatory piece of ambient music, featuring numerous field recordings from the Amazon basin. It’s a mix of Zoolook and Waiting for Cousteau; more understated than the former, and less rigid than the latter. To my mind it’s the most successful Jarre’s been at engaging with the minimal sensibility of the last 30 years of electronica. It gives me hope that something new of interest might come out in future, though Jarre is pushing 75.

What to make of it all

Having listened to a lot of other electronic music since I was a teenager, (mostly in the period 1970 - 2000), I will say that at his best, Jarre is a genuine giant. At his worst he’s a Eurotrash producer of Cirque du Soleil background music. Now I suppose Jarre’s commitment to demotic electronica is admirably of-the-people, but that doesn’t detract from the resulting music being shallow and embarrassing. It seems to me that Jarre really wanted to be a rock star, and I don’t think that instinct rather detracts from his achievements.

It’s interesting to compare Jarre with other electronica producers of his generation. But who exactly are his peers? Growing up, Vangelis seemed to be his most obvious one, but with greater familiarity of the Greek master’s work, I’m not sure they really travelled on the same road (aspects of Zoolook make me wonder if Jarre enjoyed Vangelis’ Bladerunner soundtrack though…). So who else? It seems an odd choice, but I’m going to pick Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream, because they’re roughly the same age and span the same period. The difference in temperament between the two is amusingly stereotypical: Jarre with his Gallic flair contrasting strikingly with the phlemagtically earnest German Froese. I’d say Jarre is more musically talented, but Froese was the greater artist, if that makes sense. (To be a bit clearer, I believe Froese had an enduring motivation vision for Tangerine Dream, whereas - the ecological themes of Oxygene excepted - Jarre’s career seems to have been an endless and only occasionally fruitful search for a raison d’etre.)

A less contemporaenous but more similar composer might be American electronica producer Moby, who has had great success and similar lapses in taste. And like Jarre he seems to desperately want to be a star. This time Jarre comes off rather better for the comparison; flawed as he is, he’s never been as undignified as Moby.

As much as I put the boot into Jean Michel, though, he’s one of life’s winners, really. So you know, French shrug.