Xyxophas wrote: Sun Jun 22, 2025 11:30 pm
Jote wrote:
I cringe at the riff at the very end (the very last 5 notes) of Epica Oxygene, it sounds like a tv news jingle. I don't mind the track so much, but WHY does it have to piggyback on Oxygene 4's success? Why can't it stand on its own?
I understand your perspective, but I don't feel the same cringe. I really like the combination of the two tracks, which brings together nearly 50 years of Jarre's history, from Oxygene to Oxymore. The essence remains intact. I appreciate the symbolism, and the entire piece feels epic to me. It sounds like music for a movie trailer. I also enjoy the blend of Equinoxe/Glory. I believe these mashups are a great idea. A DJ set that smoothly mixes the tracks would be even better than this.
Jote wrote:
But... why? There's eleven million artists that already do that. Why do you need JMJ to do this as well?
You're right. Just like there are millions of artists creating music in the style of the '70s, '80s, and so on. I’m not sure how to respond to that. I simply enjoy what he creates. Besides, it's not about winning an argument. Everyone has different musical tastes. I respect your preferences and wouldn’t dare say that anyone's taste is better or worse than mine. I'm just lucky that Jarre makes music that aligns well with my current musical taste. I also understand that my happiness might be someone else's disappointment, as their expectations aren't being met. If he were still making music in the '70s style, I probably would have forgotten about him by now, as that kind of music doesn't resonate with me as much as it used to. I know many people still love that style, and I feel sorry that they can't get what they want.
Jote wrote:
Countless electronic musicians claim they were inspired by his 1976-1996 works. How many people do you think will claim they got inspired by Sessions 2000, T&T, Electronica or Oxymore?
Of course, you're right. However, I don't expect a guy who's been on the scene for over 50 years to constantly inspire others or always be at the forefront. There are millions of artists out there. Today, anyone in the world can be a musician. All it takes is a regular laptop, a few pirated programs, and plugins. I believe that everything in music has already been invented, and nowadays, everyone is just repeating someone else, often unconsciously. Only the trends change. There aren't any innovators today like there used to be. When JMJ started, synthesizers were a novelty, and his tracks sounded like something unprecedented. Now, most music is created on computers. Almost all pop music is essentially electronic music. That's why many people feel nostalgic for the golden age of electronic music, which is reflected in these covers.
Personally, I no longer listen to Oxygene, Equinoxe, or Magnetic Fields. To me, they sound outdated. That's why I gladly welcome new versions. Some of them I enjoy (like Epica Oxy, Equinoxe/Glory, and MF1 from the current tour), while others I don't like at all (such as Oxy8 and Equinoxe 7). For me, Jarre's best era began in 2000 with the release of Metamorphoses, and I appreciate most of what he has created since then, even T&T. There's nothing I can do about it. I like what I like, and you like what you like. You can say that my taste is terrible. I have absolutely no problem with that.
Jote wrote:
JMJ is not getting any younger and neither is his audience. You were at the concert - did you look carefully at the crwod? The average age falls somewhere between 40 and 50.
That's true. I'm over 40 myself. Older fans usually don't want to listen to new things, while younger people aren't interested in an old guy. It's a tough situation for an artist with such a long career. JMJ has to find a way to address this issue on his own. As long as people continue to attend his concerts, buy his albums, and support him financially, it seems that everything is fine for both him and the record label.
Jote wrote:
I'm a member of a couple of JMJ communities and there are really a lot of people who couldn't even get on board with Electronica, let alone Oxymore.
That's why I'm no longer a member of such groups and usually don't participate in "old vs new" discussions. There have been places where simply stating that the original Oxygene sounds outdated to me could get you banned for alleged trolling. I won't change my taste just because others think differently. And no one will change their taste simply because some anonymous person on the internet wrote something.
Jote wrote:
By the way you can see the importance of melody because of that Astral Projection remix: if it hadn't been for those notes that they borrowed JMJ wouldn't have adopted it and reworked for his own concerts. Also: you must have seen how people frequently sing Rendez-Vous 4 at his concerts.
Yes, of course. Old melodies still evoke pleasant memories and stimulate my brain in a nice way, which is why this remix resonated so well. Similarly, RV4 is a concert classic that I used to sing at the top of my lungs. There are things that still work well at concerts.
When I'm at a concert, I stop analyzing my surroundings; I don't even mind that JMJ is faking, and I don't think about what other fans might feel. I experience an explosion of positive emotions, admire the visual effects, and start dancing like there's no tomorrow. That's why I still go to techno parties. As long as my back (and my wife) allow it, I will keep going.
Jote wrote:
You willl NEVER have this level of joy and engagement from an audience who can't hum the song, because it doesn't have melody but instead is just filled with overstimuli (noises, glitches, breaks, you name it).
It depends. At dark techno, industrial, and gabba parties, there are plenty of people who enjoy listening to noise, ultra-fast beats, and other things that are much more hardcore than what Jarre created on Oxymore. Even Exit is not that fast. But the fact is, most of those people are not fans of Jarre. Only I am.
Jote wrote:
Wow, this was lengthy, sorry, but I hope I made a point
I understand your point of view. I hope you understand mine as well. I assure you that I will never speak negatively about your musical taste or your assessment of Jarre's concert and work. It's a difficult topic, but it's nice to have a civil discussion. Thank you for that.
Jote wrote:
Yes, we do. This video confirms it beyond any doubt, it's a continuous recording
Thanks for the confirmation.
P.S. It's not that I like everything JMJ is currently creating. Herbalizer and WebSpinner didn't appeal to me. Mainly because those tracks seem to have been made quickly using some presets or purchased loops. I know that JMJ has used presets before, but in this case, it's very noticeable to me. That said, Herbalizer is still a fun track to dance to at concerts.
The unfortunate thing is that some people simply don't realise that just because they think something and they find places where people agree with them, just because those people are loud on Facebook, that doesn't mean it's the entire world or fanbase, it's just a bubble. First of all, even the basic idea that JMJ only has old 50 year old fans at his concerts is not true, in fact, I can tell you that I've personally seen many young, 20-30 year olds at the Starmus concert. Watch the concerts from his South America tour in 2018 and you will see young people dancing during that part of the Electronica tour. I've seen many new fans discovering JMJ's music. The purely or overwhelmingly old fanbase is mostly a thing for Eastern Europe, where JMJ's music had a special meaning in the 70s and 80s, in countries like Hungary and Poland, JMJ has massive fanbase from that era, but not among young people. But that's a local thing.
(By the way, just 3 days ago, I was at live event and set next to guy who was as young as I am, we started talking and I mentioned that I'm going to a JMJ concert next week... and surprisingly, he not did only know who JMJ is, he also said that he likes his music and he is aware how fresh and modern his current music is.)
At the end of the day, he is gaining new fans. And he is doing it by simply removing himself from a bubble of 70s music. He definitely has more younger fans than Kebu and Madis, the "artists" who imitate his old style.
More importantly, even those old fans can easily learn to love new music. Because yes, you can and you have to be able to sometimes "learn" loving music. Many amazing artists need multiple listens until it finally clicks. It works when you don't get the music at first, but you also feel that there is something unique in it. You need an open mind for that.
Unfortunately, unlike JMJ who does it naturally, many old people doesn't take the effort to keep up with the world. But by certain "conditioning", they can absolutely do. There is a large JMJ Facebook group where we have a core base of the most dedicated and active Jarre fans. About 3-4 years ago, we started to get more and more frustrated about how some old fans agressively reject any JMJ music that doesn't sound like Oxygene. So we did a campaign against that. Especially me. I kept posting about his later albums more and more, I used arguments, substantive takes to convince people that they should give an other chance to many albums from the 2nd part of his career, I debunked myths about him, etc. Eventually, the people who kept hating every JMJ project that doesn't sound like Oxygene started to disappear and commented less and less. Some more agressive ones even left the group, especially after I posted - quite intentionally highlighting - what JMJ said about some fans leaving his music, what I quoted in my previous reply. They got angry and left. And I don't think it's bad, if they want a nostaligia act, they have Kebu and Madis...
At the end of day, the general thinking of the group changed. Many older fans now actually claim that the newer albums are great. All it took was some promotion of his newer works, specifially focusing on the new tracks and some arguments against the usual myths about his career. But even I can't be everywhere, so I'm sure that some places still have the echo-chamber of "everyhing since XY has been unlistenable, bla bla bla"...
Of course, I'm aware that not all the older fans will get used to the new albums. As I mentioned a few actually left. But at least that's a position I can respect. People who actually accept that a JMJ who has a permanent style never existed and they simply stop following Jarre. What I really despise is the "fans" who keep listening, who comment under every post, who are still expering to hear the 70s nostalgia and they act surprised, shocked, angry when they don't get it and they send JMJ personal insults. It's especially ridiculous from fans who pay a lot of money, who travel to Bratislava from let's say Mexico just to see him and they act lik it was the worst concert ever, but they will be the fist ones to buy the new ticket to the next concert.
(It's like Terence Hill's character in the opening scene of that old Western/Comedy movie, 'They Call Me Trinity', when he enters the place, orders cooked beans with opions, eats an entire large pan of it, empties the plate, they told him it was 'on the house' and at the end, when he leaves, he says "The beans weren't much good anyway"....)
Now, when it comes to "trend setting", in a way, we could say he never set trends. And he is not doing it now. Is Oxymore "trendy"? Do you hear Taylor Swift making music like Oxymore? Somehow I doubt it. If we want to be really honest, Oxygene was not the first analog soundscape space music album. Even Tangerine Dream did one earlier and Wendy Carlos did it even earlier. What JMJ did was making his version and perfecting it on Oxygene. And he did the same many times. Zoolook wasn't the first sampledelica album, but it was unique and it was pefected there. Metamorphoses was a culmination of many 90s electronic genres with amazing sound design, Oxymore is the best product of this new 3D music technology. He is not an inventor of new styles, but he has never been. It's not "trends" that he is following, he is simply following the technology and the music that surrounds him, part of that can be trends, but he is influenced by way more than the pop cliches of the time.
Finally, let me reflect on the absolutely false claim that JMJ fans accepted his changes during this imaginary 1976-1996 period. This is so utterly untrue that I don't even know where to start debunking it. Let's start by quoting JMJ himself:
"I remember when I did Zoolook (1984) back in time. I remember one music critic in Paris and this music critic came across the road and shook my hand and said, ’It is amazing, I must congratulate you, very few artists are destroying their image as you just did with your last album!"
Any yes, Zoolook was absolutely hated by many fans at the time. Today, it's hard to imagine, because eventually it became a classic. But at that time, Zoolook was a very controverial album. And don't even mention Revolutions or Waiting for Cousteau, how many people absolutely loathed or still hate them. Many fans still think WfC is "not music". Revolutions was also hated, especially tracks like Tokyo Kid, some fans still claim that it's an unlistenable track. And then came Chronolgie and people accusin Jarre of "selling out" with trendy beats, I personally know someone who turned away from JMJ due to Chronolgie. In fact you can even find analog purists who literally hate Magnetic Fields, even today, there are comment about how bad it is:
And even Equinoxe has haters who claimed that it's a "shadow of Oxygene"! This is why this 1976-1996 era is totally imaginary. Many fans think it's 1976-1986 era, or 1976-1984 era, or 1976-1981 era (people inaccurately call it his first 3 albums), anything. What changed after 1996? Nothing. He kept releasing different albums before that and he did it after that. Some of his projects are more melodic, some are less melodic.
Metamorphoses was more melodic than Oxygene or Zoolook or Waiting for Cousteau, I guarantee you, it literally has more notes.
Now let's turn it backwards. What happened since 1996? The same stuff... the exact sam things. Oxygene 7-13 was called a terrible trance sequel of Oxygene by many, today, it's a masterpiece. Metamorphoses shocked many fans at the time, nowadays, I barely see a negative comment about it on IG, Facebook or Youtube. In fact, I've seen comments by people who realised how good it is later. The Electronica albums also shocked some people, today, they are essential part of the JMJ legacy and nobody seems to complain about them, in fact many people realised how good they are. Oxygene 3 and Equinoxe Infinity were hated when they were released, just read the FB comments on JMJ's page from that time. Today, people want music like that from him. Oxymore was also very shocking, yet, as I mentioned, more and more people played it again and realised that it's actually good if you don't have expectations, if you invest the time and energy.
That's the point. Every since Oxygene, Jarre kept releasing albums. Every time he released one, people complained, some fans left, especially when the change was more radical than ususal. And then, eventually, the album was integrated into his discography and today, it's a JMJ album.
And when it comes to his melodies: In the 70s, he used melodies that were similar to classical elements on some tracks simply because that's what they had to do at the time. Those instruments had certain technical limitations, but it was pefect to do space music soundscapes. That's the origin of electronic music, as JMJ explained it. It came from impressionist classical music. Impressionist classical music and electronic music lies in their shared emphasis on timbre, atmosphere, and innovation in sound design. You just have to understand the historical context. Then, in the late 80s, there was that "larger than life", maybe for some, slighly pompous style that influenced Rendez-Vous and a bit of Chronologie, which was basically a bridge between the 80s and 90s. But other than that, did JMJ intend to keep that style?
No, he never did. He is still influenced by classical music, but is also influenced by so many other things, new styles, new types of melodies, melodies without stucture or much evolution, melodies which are more like sound design elements than the backbone of the track, things like these. Anyone who expected JMJ to make music only based on that style was mislead.
(I'm mostly sure that won't happen but still.. 
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