Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Dr_Jones]

em120.jpg

Electronic Sound's final cover star of 2024 is the legendary Jean-Michel Jarre and we are bundling the issue with a limited edition green vinyl seven-inch featuring live versions of 'Oxygène 4' and 'Équinoxe 7', two of the synth superstar's biggest and best-known tracks.

Jean-Michel Jarre's impact on electronic music during the last 50 years is huge, not least because of his thrilling live performances. His concerts are the focus of our cover story, with Jarre detailing how his shows have evolved over the decades and guiding us through some of the events he's most famous for. His picks include Paris, Beijing and Houston, plus his Docklands sets in London in 1988. Expect highly entertaining tales of epic staging and equally epic rainfall, as well as several billion lasers. Remarkably, at the age of 76, there's no sign of Jarre starting to slow down yet, with more live extravaganzas scheduled for 2025. All power to his VCS 3, we say.

It’s been another magnificent 12 months for electronica in its various guises, so we've also devoted a chunk of the magazine to our Albums Of The Year – 100 of the very best – while still finding room for plenty of other good reads. Stand by for Kruder & Dorfmeister, GLOK, Timothy Clerkin, Dean & Britta, Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, Utah Saints, Cate Brooks, Cornelius, Wavemaker, Auntie Flo, Gaister and more. So now you'll just need a comfy chair, an endless supply of mince pies, and a bit of time to yourself...

Plus Jean-Michel Jarre green vinyl seven-inch

'Epica Oxygène' / 'Équinoxe 7'

Magazine + Vinyl for just £14.99


We're very excited to have an exclusive Jean-Michel Jarre seven-inch to accompany this month's magazine. The single is pressed on green vinyl and features two awesome live tracks, both of them recorded at the Palace of Versailles in France on Christmas Day 2023. The A-side is 'Epica Oxygène', a radical reworking of 'Oxygène 4' that edges its central musical motif into a gleaming new context. The flip is another terrific overhaul, an uptempo update of 'Équinoxe 7' initially developed by Jarre with his touring band.

“When I was asked to do a seven-inch single for this issue of Electronic Sound, I thought it could be nice to give readers a chance to discover these other interpretations of pieces they probably know," says Jarre.

As with all our music releases, this record is strictly limited and is only available to readers of Electronic Sound, so be sure to grab your copy straight away. Click here to buy your magazine and vinyl bundle now


Release date: 20/12/2024

(which Equinoxe, I don't know)


Order at:

Electronic Sound magazine
https://electronicsound.squarespace.com/shop/magazine

Rough Trade:
https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/produc ... el-jarre-7

[Richard-Eastham]

The background is Brat(islava) green!

[shadow]

Oeh, that's actually pretty cool!

[Synner]

Mr J is interviewed, and is on the front cover of the latest issue of Electronic Sound magazine - second time, I think - and they have an exclusive single available of equinoxe 7 and Epica Oxygene from the Versailles album.

[Dr_Jones]

[merged with other topic]

It's got Equinoxe 7, the wild version!

[Dr_Jones]

The magazine has 16 pages on JMJ, interviewing him and talking about various concerts.
The article starts with Aor and has a huge photo of the cast & crew, with a a very young JMJ and Igor Wakhévitch. The photo is an old one we already know, but great to see it printed full page sized. Then follows Place de la Concorde, China, Houston, Docklands, Versailles 2023 and Bratislava. All feature two pages, all one page text, one page photo.

The article confirms the Bratislava concert release, february 2025.

[Jote]

The article confirms the Bratislava concert release, february 2025.

At the risk of being "this guy" again - remember that this interview was done some time ago. He didn't mention "February" during the live Q&A, so it's possible the release date might have slipped.

[merged with other topic]

It's got Equinoxe 7, the wild version!

Wonder if it's a studio version or overlaid with the audience noise...

[Finaero]

EQ7 having the audience noise would be fitting when compared to the first (I think?) 7" release of Equinoxe 7 also being a "live" version with (horrible fake) audience noise in it

[Kanta]

[shadow]

No interest in the mag, but ordered this along with the previous one (La Cage) since I had completely forgotten that it was a thing. Can't wait for these to arrive!

[Kanta]

[Richard-Eastham]

It's great that JMJ gets another cover on Electronic Sound, but a shame this is just a portrait of him from a publicity shoot from a year or so ago. Some of the other ES covers are real works of art and it would be great if he'd been given the same treatment. See issues 113 (Pet Shop Boys), 106 (Dr Who), 105 (Vince Clark), and 74 (Telex) for just some examples. A montage of his past concerts, or more recently, elements of the Bratislava concert artwork, behind his portrait (edited/manipulated) would be brilliant.

I still vividly remember buying issue 82 of Music Technology in 1993 because he was the cover star, the first time I'd seen him on the cover of anything in the UK. It was thrilling. The magazine had used that amazing picture of him bouncing laser harp beams off his mirror sunglasses

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/BVwAAOSw ... l1600.webp

[shadow]

They had a Doctor Who issue?! It's sold out now, but what was on the single? I need to know!

[Dr_Jones]

They had a Doctor Who issue?! It's sold out now, but what was on the single? I need to know!

From the description:
This month's magazine is bundled with an awesome seven-inch featuring three tracks produced by The Radiophonic Workshop back in 1963 for the first 'Doctor Who' serial about the Daleks – 'Dalek City Corridor', 'Dalek Control Room' and 'Explosion, TARDIS Stops'. And that's all just on the A-side of this special silver disc. Reverse the record for an extract of Delia Derbyshire and Barry Bermange's 'Inventions For Radio – The Dreams', a pioneering cut-up piece from 1964.

[Richard-Eastham]

I have always been fascinated and inspired by JMJ’s attitudes to life, music and performance so I am always interested to read interviews with him. What I often find frustrating though is how he can answer questions with quotes that align with his pre-prepared agenda, using talking points he wants to get across, rather than directly engage with the question that was asked.

The question below is from the latest Electronic Sound and is an example of this. I think it’s a brilliant question and I agree with the premise, that his music is warm, and he is a warm, funny and engaging character. But rather than talk about the cowboy hat in April 1986 and that moment, the encore of that landmark concert, he returns to a regular theme of his about machines, emotions, sounds vs notes, Europe vs America etc.

But that encore deserves more focus. Up until that concert, he was a widely unknown Frenchman in the USA. But here he is in Texas, wearing a cowboy hat, in front of 1.5m people, playing a light-up synth. That is funny! And a remarkable achievement, to go from not-quite-zero recognition to such a massive multi-media moment. Is that the 1980s equivalent to "going viral" today?

The encore also creates wonderful, long-lasting image, endearing him to America, and creating a visual link between the past and the future (another one of his regular themes). I love what this image represents: the desert, the Texan landscape and the pioneers (represented by the cowboy hat) combined with the image of technology, the future, space, and the astronauts, another type of pioneer (represented by the keyboard).

It’s France x America, past x present, and a blending of trans-Atlantic cultures all in one. That is a warm gesture from a warm character. An encore that celebreates not just France but his hosts for that one-off evening, the Texans and the Americans.

And of course, France and Texas have history, with René-Robert Cavelier’s expedition to colonise Texas in the 1600s and the claims to the territory by the Spanish, French and British that followed over the next 200 years.

--
ELECTRONIC SOUND ISSUE 120

Q: I love how you came back onstage wearing a big white cowboy hat. Electronic music has this reputation for being cold and humourless, but you’re the opposite – your work is warm and you come across as a warm character.

A: “The instruments are not responsible for any kind of feelings in the music you make with them, and of course you can be very cold with a cello or with a saxophone. It all depends on how you use the instrument. The main revolution of electronic composition started in Europe with some of my teachers such as Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, creating the idea that music is not only made of notes, that you could mix the sound of a bird with a clarinet, or a washing machine with percussion, and things like this.

“This kind of sound design, mixing the sounds of nature or of the city with the orchestral and later the sampler approach, and also taking oscillators and filters from radio stations such as the BBC lab, or what happened in France or Germany with national public radio and Stockhausen’s studio… all this has been the revolution in the last century. Now the most popular music in the world is electronic, where every single electronic composer is a sound designer, integrating sound design into their music.”