Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Finaero]

I think Oxy 7-13 was his last "great" album. I like all the rest after Oxy 7-13 but they just don't seem to have the same power as that one, or say Chronologie.

Exactly my thoughts.

(Yet just a few years ago I thought WFC was his last really great album and Oxygene 7-13 just great )

[moviemaker]

Finaero (hey I just understood the name...okay I'm reeeeaaaly tired),

I think part of the magic with Oxy 7-13, Chrono, all the albums we love... is that there is that one musical through line or thought/concept that connects the album.

Geometry of Love borders on this sort of.

With Oxy 7-13 (which I just listened to from beginning to end in LA traffic yesterday) feels like I'm taken on a journey whereas Metamorphoses, Teo & Tea ( and Sessions 2000) feel like Jarre is making the traditional type of album where each song stands on it's own but they feel like songs on an album.

With Oxy, Chrono, Rendez-Vous, etc we are given really one long album's worth of a song that has peaks and valleys or Movements in the classical sense.

I'm not a musician so I hope I make sense.

I can't put into words the difference in feelings. Maybe the problem with the newer stuff is that there are moments of brilliance and then really weak parts that should have been edited out, especially be somone with discerning taste like Jarre. Maybe we're talking about the consistency of an album...

I'm sure this has been discussed before...

[AnDrOiD]

I remember when Oxygene 7-13 was released, lots of people said it was a poor attempt at recreating the magic of the original. A guy in a Danish magazine said he'd made an exact replica of Oxygene 7 with little effort.

[moviemaker]

Android,

...more importantly, do you like Oxy 7-13?

IMHO, I think it's one of the best. Maybe I'm just pining for the past but actually I always enjoyed this album from beginning to end. And I loved the Animated video for Oxy 8. Just my personal taste though.

[Jakob BC]

I remember when Oxygene 7-13 was released, lots of people said it was a poor attempt at recreating the magic of the original. A guy in a Danish magazine said he'd made an exact replica of Oxygene 7 with little effort.

The same happens with everything, not only music. If that dude made a replica who cares? Whether music is unique is not judged by how easy it is to make a replica of it. That guy even had a manual (the track) to go after. Besides that I really want to hear that replica, he can say a lot of empty words

I even think time makes music better in some cases. Metamorphoses is IMO better now than a few years ago.

[AnDrOiD]

Android,

...more importantly, do you like Oxy 7-13?

Yes, I do.

@Jakob:

I'll see if I can find that article. It's from a magazine called Midi Mag, from back in the days when I was a hardware “freak”.

[Finaero]

Myself I would consider Oxygene, Equinoxe, Zoolook, Chronologie and Oxygene 7-13 as his most definite great albums. Sure the others are good in their own ways, but those 5 would be ultimatest of them all IMO.

Agreed about Meta, in fact, Finnish TV station Yle 1 broadcasted some Year 2000 extravaganza for all day, and at some point it was in Egypt and showed the whole performance of Bells (and a bit of Je Me Souviens(sic)) and I thought it sounded really cool (yet at this point I was on my Jarre hiatus), and when I got Meta I didn't like any other track than Bells (yet I only listened to the whole album once that year) and eventually I forgot that too. And when I returned to the Jarremania in 2003, I didn't really like it then either but in a few months most tracks grew on me, and in 2005 I could basically listen through the whole album and say it's actually pretty good (not Jarresque, but good)... ... except for Love Love Love.

@moviemaker: My s/n is not derived from Jarre's Aero-theme, if that's what you thought The former name of the major Finnish airline company (Finnair) was Aero, and once I decided Finnaero would have sounded cooler than Finnair, and eventually I decided Finaero sounded even better, so I started using it. And this was before my JMJ hiatus ended, too.

[Nico_Noyau]

A guy in a Danish magazine said he'd made an exact replica of Oxygene 7 with little effort.

No need to be Danish or to work for a magazine, everybody with the right gear and the ability of knowning how to use them can make a replica.
But there are 2 different things : making a replica, and composing the track.

And IMHO, nobody was able to compose a track (or an album, Oxygène 7-13 in this actual case) in the vein of Oxygène better than JMJ, because he was the only one to know how Oxygène 1-6 really was, and how a continuation of it would turn.

Duno if I'm very clear, but my point is that no one can compose like him, if I was about to ask you "compose Equinoxe 9-15", nobody would be able to have the real Jarre-touch

[Jakob BC]

Exactly!

[AnDrOiD]

A guy in a Danish magazine said he'd made an exact replica of Oxygene 7 with little effort.

No need to be Danish or to work for a magazine, everybody with the right gear and the ability of knowning how to use them can make a replica.
But there are 2 different things : making a replica, and composing the track.

And IMHO, nobody was able to compose a track (or an album, Oxygène 7-13 in this actual case) in the vein of Oxygène better than JMJ, because he was the only one to know how Oxygène 1-6 really was, and how a continuation of it would turn.

Duno if I'm very clear, but my point is that no one can compose like him, if I was about to ask you "compose Equinoxe 9-15", nobody would be able to have the real Jarre-touch

Hence the -emoticon.

When Kraftwerk's latest album was released, many people said: "That can be done by anyone who's got a laptop and softsynths". Wrong... no one else got their minds, so even if people got access to the Kling Klang studio, using their complete gear of software and/or hardware, they wouldn't be able to do the same things. Booyah!

[moviemaker]

@Finaero: Thanks for the explanation. Very cool... I never would have figured that out!

Why not include Rendez-Vous in that list? I love Rendez-Vous.

Actually when Revolutions forst came out I really liked it but as time wore on, I liked it les and less... it's another o album that I feel he tried to make songs on an album as opposed to a Journey. I wish the whole album was like the Revolution Industrielle:Overture & Part 1, 2, & 3...

[Finaero]

I also like Rendez-Vous, but Zoolook (in my opinion) is much more innovative as an album.

[Nico_Noyau]

I don't know a lot of persons who like the second part of Revolution Industrielle, IMHO, it would have been better to separate the two parts, with a bigger suite, RI Ouverture, Part.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.... 40...70, and another album with only the other tracks, I would have never bought

[moviemaker]

I also like Rendez-Vous, but Zoolook (in my opinion) is much more innovative as an album.

Yes, Zoolook, definitely! Some songs like Diva and Zoolookologie are okay but for the times it was definitely light years ahead of the pack.

Ethnicolor I & II are simply beautiful! Wooloomooloo is just really cool...

...and Blah Blah Cafe always reminds me of a scene in Mad Max Beyond The Thunderdome...two men enter, one man leave!

[Finaero]

Zoolook and Rendez-Vous don't really have that "journey" feeling either, IMO. And by "journey" I mean that a lot of his albums can pretty much be played from the beginning to the end and they could sound like one continuous track (ignoring the Side A/B pause thing on the older albums).

Also, Revolutions and Waiting for Cousteau feel like Jarre's "soundtrack" albums to me. Like, they pretty much were soundtracks to the Docklands and La Defense concerts. Only Industrial Revolution Overture and Revolutions have been played multiple times since DD (with the whole Industrial Revolution repertoire played in 1995 and The Emigrant in Gdansk) and, well, WFC became stuck before just about every concert afterwards but Calypso has been played once. While I still like them, well, I could say they could somewhat be the extravagant peak of his career

Then again, Rendez-Vous can be seen as the soundtrack for the Houston and Lyon concerts (in fact, I think Rendez-Vous was composed in just about two months and Jarre had been contacted about the Houston gig in 1985), Chronologie for EIC tour, etc. ... and in fact, I never even thought about this before some guy on the old old Jarre.net forums (the sucky forums where anyone could have used anyone else's nickname) mentioned it.