Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[plate of chips]

MGeiss Chrono8 remix video has CGI drones.

[Dr_Jones]

Sunscreem released a digital remaster of their 1996 remix album New Dark Times called New Dark Times Unmixed, which you can buy at Bandcamp. This compilation has their remix of Chronologie 4. If I remember correctly, the original album is a continuous mix of the tracks, track times of this release differ from the 1996 album.

On their Bandcamp page, they say this about their remix:

Track 1: The band were approached by Jean Michel-Jarre to record this remix and used Lucia’s trademark choral vocals. JMJ was so impressed with the result that he invited them backstage to meet him at his Wembley concert! / written: jean michel jarre, with kind permission of disques dreyfuss

Here's the bandcamp url:

[Richard-Eastham]

Sunscreem are brilliant. I was massively into them in 1992 and 1993, and rushed out to buy their debut album O3 when it was released. I loved that whole dance/rave/pop cross-over movement of the early 1990s.

I first got into JMJ in 1988 so was already a huge fan while listening to Sunscreem. When Chronologie was released and I saw Sunscreem listed as one of the remixers, I was thrilled!

[shadow]

I have the single with that mix, always loved the vocalisation on it, never knew it was their thing. Always nice when these people can rerelease these tracks and have some backstory on the matter. Jarre genuinely always comes across as such a nice guy in all these stories <3

[Richard-Eastham]

If you've not heard O3 then it's def worth a listen all the way through. It perfectly captures those hedonistic, Eurodance, rave/pop crossover years (approx. 1991-1994). A time when the UK charts were full of Euro acts and it all seemed totally normal. The years just before the awful Britpop movement pushed all of that aside It's an album with sequencers, synths, jangly guitars and catchy hooks all over the place.

Their second album Change Or Die was released in 1996 at the height of Britpop, and was a bit more indie, and less electronic, and the tunes more melanchloic, but still brilliant. Secrets, White Skies and For Maddened Prophets - an epic finish to side one of the cassette - are the stand out tracks.

And then they sort of disappeared, but continued to issue remixes, underground tracks and more, just away from the mainstream. I am so pleased they are still active.

And yeah, JMJ does always come across as a warm, friendly person Gary Numan said this, and Matt Berry receiving an Oxygene effects pedal was such a lovely story.

[MarnixB]

I am a huge fan of the Chronologie album and the EiC tour. And I was wondering is the song “Digi sequencer” an outtake of that album? Does anyone know if a studio version excists of that song ?

[Dr_Jones]

No, it was only played at Europe in Concert (and Hong Kong/Paris 95) as a live track. It could have been a Chronologie outtake, it fits perfectly well on the album.

This makes me remember the extended Chronologie 7 that was played at Mont Saint Michel and Lausanne. It was significantly longer than the album version. Would be nice if there's a studio recording of that too.

[MarnixB]

No, it was only played at Europe in Concert (and Hong Kong/Paris 95) as a live track. It could have been a Chronologie outtake, it fits perfectly well on the album.

This makes me remember the extended Chronologie 7 that was played at Mont Saint Michel and Lausanne. It was significantly longer than the album version. Would be nice if there's a studio recording of that too.

I even didn’t know he played a longer version of Chrono 7.
I totally agree a studio version of both songs are really welcome

[MarnixB]

Sunscreem released a digital remaster of their 1996 remix album New Dark Times called New Dark Times Unmixed, which you can buy at Bandcamp. This compilation has their remix of Chronologie 4. If I remember correctly, the original album is a continuous mix of the tracks, track times of this release differ from the 1996 album.

On their Bandcamp page, they say this about their remix:

Track 1: The band were approached by Jean Michel-Jarre to record this remix and used Lucia’s trademark choral vocals. JMJ was so impressed with the result that he invited them backstage to meet him at his Wembley concert! / written: jean michel jarre, with kind permission of disques dreyfuss

Here's the bandcamp url:

In the nineties I missed this remix nice to hear this remix.
For me was always the Atomium remix one of my favorite remixes of that song

[Jarrepeggiator]

Chronologie was released on this day 32 years ago.
I think it’s still an album without one general consensus within the Jarre fanbase. Of course, generally, the album is very popular, but the different types and generations of Jarre fans view the album quite differently, depending on when they became Jarre fans.

There are two common opinions I often see: The first is that Chronologie was the „last classic Jarre album with old school melodies”. The other one is that Chronologie was the „first Jarre album with new rhythms with modern digital beats”. You can say that it’s logical that both have some truth in it. But I actually think we should go a step further: Chronologie is a great album for this specific reason, for being both. The greatest strength of this album is the way it mixes seemily incompatible elements of music. Only Jarre can do an album like this.

You could also say that Chronologie is a transitional album, kind of like Magnetic Fields was. The way Magnetic Fields is right there between the space music world of Oxygene and the sample-based world of Zoolook, Chronologie is right there, somewhere between Rendez-Vous and Metamorphoses. The first side, part 1, 2 and 3 are still mostly dominated by 80s sound with huge string-like synths & choir sounds, etc. Part 1 is probably my favourite JMJ track in that style, I like it even more than RV 2. Chronologie 4 is a fast-paced 90s track with a memorable trance-like beat. Part 5 is a track where not just the beat, but also the melody sounds like an instrumental hiphop song, just like Part 8. Part 6 has that iconinc, strong, pumping techno style beat and Part 7 is a short experimental, eerie ambient track, clearly influenced by 90s IDM bands.

On paper, you would never ever think that the style of Second Rendez-Vous 2 and techno or hiphop beats could work on the same album. Yet, in this case, it is what's making the album memorable. Let’s take Chonologie 6. Without the beautiful floating synths, the track would be a dry, repetitive techno track, without that exact beat, the track would lack any dynamism. The only way this track works is by combining seemily incompatible things.

I also love the fact that the album was recorded with Studer recorders, but not the classic, famous analog one. It was a newer, digital one. It's kind of symbolic. (And this is why the album was inaccurately promoted by some people as him going back to analog)

When Jarre produced the album in 1992, he embraced the latest influences of the time, but he did that in a unique way. And that’s exactly why Chronologie is a timeless album. You could say that simply making a track in that 80s Rendez-Vous-like style would be a product of its time or that those 90s beats are the products of its time. But good luck finding an album that uses these "typical" styles is such a unique way in those times. That’s the talent of Jean-Michel Jarre.

[Finaero]

I can still kind of remember not liking the album around its release (of course, I was 5 in 1993, but still) and actually feeling annoyed at the Chronologie tracks being played at CPLT - sometimes even fast-forwarding the (already a bit damaged) VHS tape the concert was recorded on to get to the other tracks. But that concert and the Hong Kong album started to make the album grow on me, and when I stopped listening to JMJ's music in 1998 and returned to it properly (and for good) in 2003, Chronologie actually was one of the albums that had already made me reconsider listening to JMJ again in late 2002 (as my dad's room was adjacent to mine, I had heard the album through the walls countless of times in the intervening years). In fact, that's the reason why the last music I played to my dad on his deathbed two years ago was the entirety of the album, and I can only hope that in his state he managed to hear it one last time.

While I don't entirely agree with my past reasoning and points I gave to the album and its tracks (for one, even if I did such ratings anymore, I'd rate part 3 a bit lower these days and part 7 higher), getting the Korean LP in early 2017 sort of resulted in a bit of a renaissance of the album on my part, because on that LP in Chronologie 4 one can clearly hear the hi-hats stopping around the 0:20/0:40/etc bit which I had never noticed before in any other version, so I started listening through the album possibly more than ever before.

Random tidbit: Possibly due to its "Rendez-Vousness", I do remember liking Part 1 a lot more than the other tracks even in the mid-1990s, and even imagined it being played on Docklands in particular - at the time not knowing anything about Europe in Concert and JMJ wearing the same (or similar) jacket there.

[Dr_Jones]

Good times. I fondly remember buying Chronologie in The Hague at the Plato. Bart, the guy who ran jarre.net, and me both bought it and we listened the first track at his place. Then I had to get home because I had an appointment with 1906 to listen to the album at my place. I did go to some record stores in Leiden on the way. There was this guy browsing through the J section so I asked if he was looking for JMJ's latest album and he said yes. I showed him my copy and said Plato in The Hague has it. So he ran off to get it. Hope he got it there.

Anyway, 1906 and me went home and we played the album. I was blown away. This was a classic JMJ album but with modern house influences. The rest of the year I had the album on constant repeat. I was almost obsessed by it. The concerts played the album almost in its entirety which showed a lot of confidence in the music by JMJ.

[jeanbatman]

(...) when I stopped listening to JMJ's music in 1998 and returned to it properly (and for good) in 2003,(...)

[OT] What did you listen to between 1998 and 2003?

[Finaero]

[OT] What did you listen to between 1998 and 2003?

I got into computer games and Star Wars in late 1997, so in hindsight mainly game soundtracks (never had the SW ones, but since the SW games on CD used the movie ones anyway, that sort of counts).

(Less said about Limp Bizkit in 2000-01 the better *cough*)

[shadow]

I mostly like the album, just not the biggest fan of Part 3, first half of Part 5 and Part 7.
In general I'm just not a big fan of the Part 3 type of tracks, also on other albums. Oxygène Part 9 I also find an absolute bore when in context of the rest of the album. It's not a bad track, it just doesn't fit with the rest I find.
Part 5 should have been split in two between the slow reprise of Part 4 and the second half. I like the track, but the juxtaposition between the two halves just doesn't work for me as a single track.
Part 7 is just whatever from start to finish. I do remember hearing a longer version, but can't for the life of me remember where though.

The rest of the album? No notes, absolute perfection*!
*Well, I prefer the slightly extended Part 4 and Geiss remix of 8 more than the album versions, but that's just nitpicking at this point.

-snip-

Having grown up digital downloads starting to take over, it's a shame I've never experienced this type of stories with friends. I've had this with films and games, but never with music, which is a shame since I do listen to music with friends together, just never this way. Honestly kind of jealous and would love to do this some time with a Jarre album whenever a new one releases!