h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

do you thnik that his music belongs only to the 80's? has anyone heard some of his new stuff? is it worth listening to

The last thing I heard by Jarre was 'Calypso' which had a great first track, and then the rest was boring. That was in the late 80s or early 90s.

Calypso was a three part suite that made up the first half of "En Attendant Cousteau" (aka "Waiting for Cousteau"). The second half, the title track, is pretty unexciting. It basically takes about half of its 45 minute length to get started and is more of an exercise in soundscape layering than an actual melodic piece.

After that, there's "Chronologie" which I think is superb and well worth picking up, and "Oxygene 7-13" which is also well worth hearing - it's basically a return to some of the themes and musical styles of his first piece (Oxygene) but very much set in the 90s. Some really nice bits, but not very cohesive.

"Metamorphosis" I wasn't so taken by - he experimented with vocals which I didn't like too much and departed quite radically from his past musically too. I haven't heard the "Sessions" CD but I believe it's more experimental and even verging on a contemporary jazz sound.

Avoid the below-average live album "Hong-Kong" recorded on the Chronologie tour.

JMJ never stopped making innovative music which is always worth a listen.

I agree about Chronologie and the second Oxygene album. Great stuff. But I just could not get the hang of the following albums. Metamorphoses had a pretty dense sound, but that was all you could say about that. I listened to Sessions in the store and put it down again. I would not mind an all out jazz album by jmj, but Sessions is more about noise, lots of fake wind sounds, deep bass, and few or no ideas as far as composition is concerned. Jarre released AERO last year, which is a kind of Best-Of with all songs remixed and rerecorded. Amazing in terms of what Jarre did with stereo/quattro effects. But he actually expects you to have a 5 speaker surround sound system and the time and energy to sit down, stop doing anything and listen for about 80 minutes. Jarre also released an album called "Geometry of Love" but it first was only to be had in a highly exclusive club in Paris that the average fan just did not have the clothes to even get inside. The album seemsm to be in stores now, though I have never seen it and don't know what it sounds like...

Y.

2 Jarre dvds will be released in June
- Jean Michel Jarre: Jarre In China (2004) (DVD/CD)
- Jean Michel Jarre: Oxygene In Moscow
http://www.jarreuk.com

I think that Jarre music is for people who realy like this kind of music...

I the zoolook cd

I think I've heard summat by him, it sounded like a washing machine that had too much stuff in it with someone repeating the word 'Tooth' over the top of it. I think it went on for about 15 minutes.

As, Elmer Fudd, would say, wubbish.

Nonono, you are thinking of Kraftwerk or maybe Klaus Doldinger. God, I miss their music. I have some recordings by those guys, but all on tape or vinyl records. My stereo broke down - actually, just one "engine" broke down, but as both the record player and the tape player were driven off that engine, I am now totall lost. I can play CDs, but only because my CD player is seperate from the rest of the stereo. So no more Kraftwerk and Klaus Doldinger for a while. Come to think of it, Doldinger is not the right guy, after all. Klaus SCHULZE is who I had in mind all this time. Oh well...

Jarre is cool, or rather, he used to be. I saw him live during his Berlin concert of the Chronologie tour, and it was awesome. Saw him again for Oxygene 7-13, and it was not so great anymore. Well, as they sing: Don't konw what you got till it's gone...

Y.

I like to listen to Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto!

to be honest I think that the techno from the 70s is million times better than techno of now!

on 14 July 2005 it is 15 yrs ago that I saw Jarre in La Defence, Paris, France.
I was there with about 2.5 million people.

I do not speak French

I wonder whether the 'tooth' piece might have been 'Ethnicolor' - it takes a bit of getting used to but is brilliant once it gets started...

I saw JMJ on the Chronologie tour in Manchester and Oxygene 7-13 in Glasgow. I disagree - I preferred the Oxygene show - less show and more music , especially the old stuff.

Well, my mistake on the Oxygene-Revamped show may have been to follow my girlfriend to the very first line of the concert. Yes, you do see everyone upstage very close, but the sound is awful up there, and you don't see much of the showy elements like projections, stage design or that there actually is someone playing the lead on Magentic Fields Part 4 - that guy was hidden behind some cool stack of synths...

Y.

You needed to be further back to see most of the stuff on the indoor tour (oxygene 7-11) but they did do some funky stuff with flourescent strip lights. I saw that one in Manchester at the arena here. I also saw the Chronologie tour in Manchester (the one and only time I've ever went to Maine Rd).

The one and only visit to Maine Road for me too. I beleive it is no more.

Yeah - the flourescent strip stuff during Mag Fields was the main bit of the Oxygene show that sticks in my mind. Maybe it was the amount of Mag Fields he performed that made me prefer the gig - that's my favourite album of his

i'm totally surprised by your impressions, i must admit. not in a negative way, of course it's just, that i have never been to his concert and you're talking more or less about his concerts and shows. actually i don't have any visual impression of his music. i've seen some clips, but that's all. i was just a kid when i first heard some of his music. if i remember correctly it was a cassette of his concert in houston in 1986, i think. it sounded cosmic and very distant. i suppose that is exactly the thing that attracts me in his music still . it has nothing to do with down here which makes it different from all the popular, if i may say so, music these days.
i think that the oxygenes 7-13 are the best that he has made so far. ethnicolor 1 is also great. still i haven't heard his "geometry of love" except for the things that i have found in amazon.

I saw JMJ in Docklands during his Revolutions tour, Brilliant

jarre's ability to create new music is now very questionable.
he seems to mainly in it for the money.
i have started my jarre collection because of this.

I do not think so.....

from last 5 cds/dvd 3 definitely not commercial, if you read the reactions of fans
...the 3 cds I mean "metamorphosis" | "sessions 2000" | "geometry of love".

the cd/dvd "aero" | dvd/cd "live in china" were on egde of commercial.
the "live in china" was not very intresting registration in my opinion.

do not get me wrong I like all his work, but some just favorites.
"zoolook" | "revolution" | "metamorphosis"

Jarre is (or at least was) pretty well known here in Houston - from Wikipedia:

In 1986 NASA and the city of Houston asked him to do a concert to celebrate NASA's 25th anniversary and the city of Houston 150th anniversary. During that concert, astronaut Ronald McNair was to play the saxophone part of Jarre's piece Rendez-Vous VI while in orbit on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was to have been the first piece of music recorded in space, for the album Rendez-Vous. After the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986 which killed McNair, the piece was recorded with a different saxophonist, retitled Ron's piece and the album dedicated to the seven Challenger astronauts. The Houston concert entered the Guinness Book of Records for the audience of over 1.5 million.

I've got Rendevouz in my collection, he dedicated it to Ron McNair at the Docklands concert too

When ever I hear or read the name Jean Michel Jarre the words 'is a fraud' spring into my head. Bill Bailey samples the phrase then plays it through a synth. Very funny and clever.

Isn't the question like asking whether Bach was 18th Century? or the Beatles was 60's? Is the question supposed to intimate that his music is outdated/of its time/tacky/ironic?

p.s. I own none of his music but I do like it.