BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

What are your thoughts about the artwork accompanying JMJ's albums?

To skip the usual Granger hailing thing (I love his work), I think the Zoolook cover is very funky, very well suiting to the eigthies yet eternal feel of the album, and another one I really like is Metamorphoses, very very warm..

Aero is cool. Session 2000 is really clean.

Love Leelene

a lot is inspirational, BUT most is crap - Oxy 7-13 JMJ tried (but failed) IMO to re-create the style. Pretty much after 1984 JMJ album art was shite... I am a designer and to me it's mostly crap - it does not sell the music contained within. I adore the early Jarre - Deserted Palace, Oxygene, Equinoxe - by far the next most iconic cover to Dark Side IMO - M.Fields was boring, after that shit, nothing noteable comes to mind, Meta well hmmmm!, Cousteau - interesing but dull, in fact Dull is how I describe jarres covers - he is a bloody painter for Christs sake, studying it in the sixties - I have seen some of his work, why oh why he doesn't design his own covers mystifies me... or he can ask me if he likes.

Rendez-vous album cover is really nice

My ratings of some of the covers

Oxygene - 10/10
Equinoxe - 10/10
Magnetic Fields - 8.5/10
Zoolook - 6/10
Rendez-vous - 8/10
Revolutions - 6.5/10
Jarre Live - 3/10
Destination Docklands - 6.5/10
Waiting For Cousteau - 7/10
Images - 7/10
Chronologie - 7.5/10 (I like the idea, but the cover isn't still perfect)
Jarremix - 5/10
Oxygene 7-13 - 8/10
Oxygene 7-13+1 - 1/10
That 1998 compilation - 3/10
Metamorphoses - 6/10
Sessions 2000 - 4/10
Geometry of Love - 6/10
Aero - 7.5/10

I realy like the cover of Chronologie! The rest is also good, but some are not so good (like Jarre Live, Sessions 2000, ...)...

Greetzzz...

I love the "Equinoxe" artwork, also the "Oxygene" one is quite good (and interesting because of it's meaning)...the "Zoolook" one isn't bad, I think it perfectly fits with the album. "Metamorphoses"...quite simple, but I like the photo very much. "Chronologie" and "Geometry of Love" ones are also OK.

I remember that I've read somewhere that JMJ wanted "Oxygene 7-13" artwork to be very similar to the first "Oxygene" one, but that was concern that people will mix them, so the new was made. Do you know something about it?

Ronja wrote:I remember that I've read somewhere that JMJ wanted "Oxygene 7-13" artwork to be very similar to the first "Oxygene" one, but that was concern that people will mix them, so the new was made. Do you know something about it?

Both artworks were created by Michel Granger, and like Jean Michel wanted the music to be a next chapter to the original Oxygene, Granger designed a cover that continues the idea behind Oxygene: in the first one the human (skull) is inside the earth, and in the second it's the other way round: the earth is inside the human being. And they lived happily ever after (It was a story after all )

Yeah, I know all that, I was just intersted if he really wanted the "Oxygene 7-13" artwork to be nearly the same as "Oxygene" one or if it's just one of these stories invented by boring fans or something

No he really wanted it to be like that. The concept was made by Jean Michel himself, Bernard Beaugendre and Michel Granger.

I like the colours and the clean and simple design of the WFC album.

It's all awesome, except:
-WFC
-Revolutions
-Jarre Live (but the Destination Docklands art rocks)

My favs are Magnetic Fields, Meta and Aero. Aero is rocks!!

I love Oxygène one, Equinoxe one, Chants Magnétiques one, Zoolook one, Révolution one, Chronologie one, Oxygène 7-13 one, AERO one and Metamorphoses one
I think I forgot many

Well, obviously all the Granger ones are classic and great.