From musique concrète to stadium spectacles, Jean-Michel Jarre pioneered futuristic, but accessible, electronica for many years. On his 2010 tour – when AI-generated artwork was nonetheless a concept – Prog discovered him paying tribute to visionary author Arthur C Clarke, and arguing for a reboot of humanity’s future ambitions.
Within the realm of digital prog, no determine looms bigger than Jean Michel Jarre. He’s bought 80 million albums, staged among the most spectacular dwell occasions the world has ever seen and virtually single-handedly taken the instrumental synthesizer kind academia and avant-garde artwork centres to the plenty. And but, regardless of all the things he’s achieved, it’s typically been tempting to write down him off as irrelevant.
Within the wake of his meteoric rise to fame by way of 1977 debut Oxygène and 1978 follow-up Équinoxe, a brand new breed of innovators entered the digital area. As early as 1979, former punk upstart Gary Numan began a wave of electro-pop which swept the synth stars of the 70s onto the sidelines. The leading edge had moved, leaving meandering, album-length suites behind.
Different new equivalent to Depeche Mode and New Order quickly adopted, dominating the charts whereas the likes of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Jarre himself started to lose floor. The Nineties have been even harder, with the dominant dance music tradition casting Jarre and his ilk as overblown, outdated anachronisms from a bygone age.
All this regardless of the big affect the pioneers of the 70s had on synth pop, dance, trance, techno, glitch, storage, home and nearly each different type of digital music.
Jarre, nonetheless, has by no means wavered in his dedication and his profile has remained excessive. He continues to document and tour commonly – and to his credit score, he’s refused to play it secure. Whereas the albums Oxygène 7-13 and Oxygène: New Grasp Recording have seen him exploiting the legacy that’s rightfully his, he hasn’t relied closely on nostalgia.
Works equivalent to 2000’s Métamorphoses – the primary JMJ album to characteristic precise songs with lyrics – and 2007’s dance-orientated Téo & Téa have displayed a willingness to stray exterior his consolation zone, take dangers and even enter territory dominated by youthful generations.
Regardless of the relative deserves of his studio output, his dwell exhibits have remained widespread sights, and he continues to carry out on a scale few can match. Though his ongoing world tour is one thing of a best hits package deal, it sees Jarre innovating once more and setting himself some stiff challenges alongside the best way. Like all the things he does, it’s massive – however there’s a component of randomness and benign chaos in his present performances that’s very far faraway from the choreographed theatrics he’s usually related to.
“I’ve accomplished my finest to make it thrilling and visible,” Jarre explains. “I’ve tried very onerous to emphasize the cinematic aspect of the music for this tour. It’s not respectful to take a seat behind a laptop computer for 2 hours – individuals are shopping for tickets, in spite of everything. I’m up there on stage with three different guys and it’s completely dwell.”
What’s significantly putting about Jarre’s 2010 present is simply how bodily the entire thing is. Making his approach to the stage by way of a gob-smacked viewers is just the start. He stays animated all through as his companions twiddle and fiddle with the huge array of classic synths, jogging in regards to the stage, triggering whooshing and bleeping noises as he passes every instrument, orchestrating bouts of hand-clapping as he goes.
He straps on an accordion for Chronologie 6 earlier than firing up the legendary laser harp for Rendez-Vous. It’s as full- on as it’s hands-on; and with all the things occurring in actual time, they’re flying by the seat of their pants. “For those who make a mistake on stage, folks like that,” Jarre says. “It’s a component of hazard. It’s a singular second and it makes every live performance completely different. At this time a lot is pre-programmed. I’m making an attempt to make every live performance as a singular second that I can share on that night with that viewers.”
If the street journey has an unofficial theme, it’s the rediscovery of analogue. Jarre overtly embraced digital synthesis and sampling when it first emerged – notably on 1981’s Magnetic Fields and 1984’s Zoolook – however time and time once more he’s returned to the expertise of the previous and the mercurial devices he popularised all these years in the past.
The sound being performed is as necessary because the notes being performed… and there are belongings you simply can’t do with digital
“We forgot what the analogue period gave us,” Jarre admits, “and we forgot what we owe to the interval. These devices disappeared through the 80s and didn’t have an opportunity to develop up – to mature. At this time, a violinist desires a few Stradivarius, an instrument made within the seventeenth century. A guitar participant desires a few Gibson Les Paul ’58. For me it’s the identical with analogue synthesizers.
“Within the early days of digital you might play chords and notes, however with preprogrammed sounds. With analogue expertise you possibly can management the entire color and tone of sounds. The sound being performed is as necessary because the notes being performed. Folks need the heat – and there are belongings you simply can’t do with digital.”
A notion persists that digital music is mostly chilly and impersonal. Within the 70s that view was rampant, and fed into wider debates about the place expertise was taking us. Synthesizers have been perceived as inherently unmusical – even a menace to music, particularly dwell music – and introduced out latent Luddite tendencies spurred on by obscure fears of the unknown.
“As a part of my early work I used to be requested to do one thing for the theatre,” Jarre recollects, “and we had some hassle with the Musicians Union making an attempt to unplug the audio system as a result of they thought our machines would change them!”
The dystopian nightmares of computer-dominated music by no means materialised. There was some extraordinarily austere and alien digital music created over time however the notion of expertise radically undermining the fundamentals of how music is created and carried out has by no means come to go. Most experiments with pure computer-generated music have proved to be dismal failures from a human perspective.
Because the 60s, after we speak about music we’re speaking about songs. However music, traditionally, is with out phrases
And therein lies one of many secrets and techniques of Jarre’s success: the human dimension. His tonal palette could also be ethereal and otherworldly, however he himself stays the focus and he’s a star within the quaint sense. The place Tangerine Dream all however disappeared in darkened Gothic cathedrals, and Kraftwerk tried to engineer themselves out of existence with robotic replacements, Jarre was centre stage, swamped by high-tech paraphernalia, lit up like a Christmas tree and with 1,000,000 quid’s price of fireworks exploding overhead.
He’s a star who’s been married 3 times – twice to actresses – and a TV chat present common who seems in shiny leisure weeklies like Whats up! How a lot have you learnt about Edgar Froese or Ralf Hütter’s personal life?
Apart from Jarre presenting a human face, his early compositions had an natural really feel which appealed to many who wouldn’t in any other case have thought-about themselves followers of digital music. His heat tones, effervescent melodies and delicate French people music influences created a welcoming, reassuring audio world, even when the temper was melancholy or reflective. Crucially, its instrumental nature meant it might go world, crossing cultural boundaries to grow to be a really common language.
“What’s distinctive in instrumental music is that you just’re within the direct narrative course of,” says Jarre. “You’re giving a narrative to somebody. Instrumental music is essentially the most interactive means of expression, the place you allow the viewers free to construct their very own story, their very own state of affairs or their very own film of their minds.
I all the time thought it was synthetic to name one half Oxygene: Idiot On A Hill after I’m not telling the story of a idiot on a hill!
“I all the time felt there was one thing very particular about music with out phrases. Because the 60s, after we speak about music we’re speaking about songs. However songs are only a sector of what’s music – music, traditionally, is with out phrases.
“For me, digital music is like portray: coping with completely different textures and hues to create views and soundscapes fairly than telling a narrative. The explanation so lots of my albums have a component one, half two, three, 4, 5 is I all the time thought it was synthetic to name one half Oxygene: Idiot On A Hill after I’m not telling the story of a idiot on a hill!”
On first listening to, his music sounded extremely futuristic. The clear strains and exact pulse appeared to evoke visions of a wondrous age to return, an period of enlightenment for a united humanity. Jarre’s portrait on the rear of Equinoxe depicts him in a silvery area go well with, set in opposition to a spacious, spotless cityscape at sundown. It’s a picture of man, his city surroundings and nature in concord, a tantalising glimpse right into a optimistic future for humanity set to the soundtrack contained inside.
The sense of pleasure and surprise present in Oxygène and Èquinoxe has by no means been misplaced. Mankind could also be farther than ever from the utopian way forward for previous promise, however Jarre maintains his optimistic outlook.
His newest tour is dubbed 2010 for greater than the plain cause. It’s a tribute to Arthur C Clarke, the towering literary and scientific determine who’s been immensely influential in Jarre’s life and work. One would possibly even name him a mentor. Because it turned out, the emotions of admiration have been mutual, with Clarke writing in his e-book 2010: Odyssey Two, “I listened to all of Jean Michel Jarre’s albums obsessively, to the purpose of figuring out each observe by coronary heart. His music accompanied me as I wrote.”
Our relationship with the longer term is filled with nervousness and guilt… it’s fairly smug to suppose we’ve got the way forward for the planet in our arms
Jarre says: “I couldn’t imagine my eyes after I noticed that! I’m a fan of 2001, the e-book and the film. I used to be in London in 1982 when the sequel 2010 got here out. I obtained the e-book and was amazed to see my title within the acknowledgements. So I wrote him a letter and we began a correspondence. He was a really attention-grabbing character. So I believed that, beginning this actually particular world tour undertaking in 2010, it might be good merely calling it 2010 as a tribute to him.”
The pair shared a way of untapped, limitless risk for the longer term growth of the human race. In searching for out new sonic worlds, Jarre continues his lifelong quest to reimagine what music may be, to encourage others to succeed in past their assumed limitations and pursue the unattainable.
“We now have a darkish imaginative and prescient of tomorrow,” he says. “Our relationship with the longer term is filled with nervousness and guilt about air pollution, the surroundings, world warming, how we’re going to outlive on the planet and all that. Even when it’s partially true, I believe it’s fairly smug to suppose we’ve got the way forward for the planet in our arms.
“There’s a number of limitation in all this and it’s time to revive a dynamic imaginative and prescient for the longer term that’s not simply linked to recycling our rubbish and all these issues. Folks like Arthur C Clarke gave us a really optimistic imaginative and prescient of the longer term. It was like after the yr 2000 nothing can be the identical. We had a number of hopes and fantasies and desires in regards to the future.
“In today, with the yr 2000 behind us, it’s a little bit bit like we’re orphans of our personal future. I believe we have to recreate a dynamic imaginative and prescient for our future that we’ve misplaced.”
