BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

Please post any reviews and impressions in this thread instead of the Electronica by Jean Michel Jarre (Album) thread. This will enable to keep the album thread tidy. Many thanks in advance.

Real nice impression

http://www.theolympian.com/entertainmen ... 35475.html

At 65, Jean-Michel Jarre is a peculiar legend. He's a godfather of the populist melodic-electronic movement (1977's dreamy album "Oxygene" established his place), but one whose hypnotic rhythms and funky grooves weren't quite dancey enough to give him Kraftwerk/Giorgio Moroder-level fame. Francophile synth pop, breathy sampled vocals - he did all this practically before Daft Punk was born, but without so much gloss or fanfare. Now, eight years after his last album, Jarre and some famed followers and friends (Pete Townshend, Little Boots) join forces with him for high-wire atmospheres and mumbling pulses.

As with his film-composer father, Maurice Jarre, there is cinematic sweep to every moment here, be it intimately and ominously crepuscular (as you find on tracks with Laurie Anderson and Depeche Mode's Vince Clarke) or openly bright and jamming ("Stardust" with Armin van Buuren, or the title track with Boys Noize). Jarre and Air perform a sexy, slinky, whispering "Close Your Eyes," and he lets the arpeggios rise and fall like dark river waters on "Suns Have Gone" with Moby. For all these collaborative efforts - often powerful and often different from their originals, as with Townshend's "Travelator (Part 2)" - Jarre's spooky genius stands out.

- A.D. Amorosi

plate of chips wrote:Real nice impression

http://www.theolympian.com/entertainmen ... 35475.html

At 65, Jean-Michel Jarre is a peculiar legend. He's a godfather of the populist melodic-electronic movement (1977's dreamy album "Oxygene" established his place), but one whose hypnotic rhythms and funky grooves weren't quite dancey enough to give him Kraftwerk/Giorgio Moroder-level fame. Francophile synth pop, breathy sampled vocals - he did all this practically before Daft Punk was born, but without so much gloss or fanfare. Now, eight years after his last album, Jarre and some famed followers and friends (Pete Townshend, Little Boots) join forces with him for high-wire atmospheres and mumbling pulses.

As with his film-composer father, Maurice Jarre, there is cinematic sweep to every moment here, be it intimately and ominously crepuscular (as you find on tracks with Laurie Anderson and Depeche Mode's Vince Clarke) or openly bright and jamming ("Stardust" with Armin van Buuren, or the title track with Boys Noize). Jarre and Air perform a sexy, slinky, whispering "Close Your Eyes," and he lets the arpeggios rise and fall like dark river waters on "Suns Have Gone" with Moby. For all these collaborative efforts - often powerful and often different from their originals, as with Townshend's "Travelator (Part 2)" - Jarre's spooky genius stands out.

- A.D. Amorosi

A lot of errors in this article. Jarre is 67 and Oxygene is from 1976.

Nice one…
http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=1479851

cool. a positive rating.
a descriptive review but upbeat mostly. nice!

One of Jarre's best albums (8,5/10)
http://louderthanwar.com/jean-michael-j ... um-review/

6 reviews in one single stroke: Synth.nu

Another Nice Review http://www.releasemagazine.net/reviews/ ... e-machine/

Big paper http://thestar.ie/jean-michel-jarre-we- ... he-future/

Moved from the main thead:


My preliminary rating, based mostly on the 90 seconds iTunes samples (except for If..!/Stardust)

The Time Machine: 8/10 => very well done
Glory: 5/10 => disposable pop #1
Close your eyes: 9/10 => bonus points for reminding me most of the early Jarre albums
Automatic pt. 1: 8/10 => Chronologie 9
Automatic pt. 2: 7/10 => Oxygene 14
If..! 6/10 (full song) => disposable pop #2
Immortals: 9/10 => everything that reminds me of the "Novastorm" soundtrack gets a thumbs-up
Suns have gone: 6/10 => I could swear I saw Moby starring in the latest Pixar movie as a kind of blue-ish emotion...
Travelator pt.2: 4/10 => too weird for my taste, that one...
Conquistador: 7/10 => could use a bit more Jarre-influence, but otherwise well done
Zero Gravity: 11/10 => superb! Edgar Froese knew how to go out on a high note
Rely on me: 9/10 => glad the Diva magic still works here
Stardust: 9/10 (full song) => could have been another one for the "disposable pop" bin, but surprisingly really, really awesome
Watching you: 5/10 => another weird one, maybe I'll like the full version more...
A question of blood: 10/10 => nearly as perfect as the Tangerine Dream collaboration
The train & the river: 8/10 => and speaking of Tangerine Dream, this one also sounds a bit "tangerine dreamy"

VinylScratch wrote: Zero Gravity: 11/10

That note is from another planet.
But your insight is very interesting.

Greetings!

Long time Jarre fan.
I've been trying to register for what seems an age.

Anyway, I have the new album and here are my thoughts:

he Time Machine: 8/10 - I like it
Glory: 8/10 - Album version much better than other versions
Close your eyes: 9/10 - Lovely track
Automatic pt. 1: 8/10 - Great track and build up into next track
Automatic pt. 2: 9/10 - Even better. Very chronologie
If..! 7/10 (full song) - Very poppy, but I like it.
Immortals: 7/10 - Epic sounding but too much bang and clatter.
Suns have gone: 9/10 - Possibly my favourite track, very emotional.
Travelator pt.2: 8/10 - Hated it, now love it.
Conquistador: 7/10 - Some great bass effects in the middle, but perfer JMJ remix
Zero Gravity: 9/10 - Sublime
Rely on me: 7/10 - Interesting, but not one I have on repeat
Stardust: 8/10 (full song) - Great trance-like track, not sure about the break in the middle.
Watching you: 4/10 - The weak link
A question of blood: 9/10 - Great track. Very Carpenter.
The train & the river: 8/10 - Very nice track. Seems a bit random at times.

http://m.thenational.ae/arts-life/music ... onic-music


A welcome return by Jean-Michel Jarre, the true pioneer of Electronic Music

by Nick March : nmarch@thenational.ae

Jean-Michel Jarre could easily lay claim to a host of titles: the father of EDM, the godfather of ambient – he might even be the original superstar DJ.

Without his synthesisers blazing a trail through the 1970s and 1980s, there might never have been dance music as we know it today. Without Jarre performing to more than three million people in Russia in the 1990s, there might never have been Armin van Buuren headlining at du Arena in Abu Dhabi. Without the French composer, there might only be a bunch of possibilities rather than certainties. 

It’s been eight years since Jarre recorded new ­material. Now he’s back with 16 tracks gathered together under the banner of Electronica 1: The Time Machine. A sequel, Electronica 2, is expected early next year. 

Electronica 1 is actually a series of 15 collaborations. A quick browse through the list of contributing artists leaves no doubts about Jarre’s enduring pulling power. You’ll find two works recorded with Erasure's Vince Clarke, plus tracks co-written with Pete Townshend, Moby, the aforementioned van Buuren, Laurie Anderson, 3D of Massive Attack, Air and more.

If ..!, written and recorded with Little Boots, provides one of the album’s standout moments. Its loopy synth track is overlaid with Victoria Hesketh’s infectious musings on modern life and empty communication.

Suns Have Gone, on which Moby shares the credit, is equally wonderful, pairing a typically epic Jarre soundscape with a vocal of real substance. 

His collaboration with ­Anderson, the performance artist best known in the music world for her 1980s oddity O Superman, is more frustrating. This is in part because Rely on Me is not really a cooperative work – rather, it is a meeting of uncompromising minds. Jarre’s sequencing warbles away in the background like data struggling to find adequate bandwidth, while Anderson talks in that ­discombobulated style of hers that is often more disconcerting than dynamic. Travelator (Part 2), with Townshend, is equally unsettling, as the vocal just sounds too forced. 

I am not sure how many people would admit to having missed Jarre during his fallow years, but time and again Electronica 1 proves how good it is that the Frenchman is back on the scene. 

The album’s closer, a ­seven-minute arrangement called The Train & The River recorded with Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang, is a discursive and arresting hybrid of ambient and chill. It’s also a wonderful work that demands repeated play. It stands as ­absolute evidence that Jarre is still relevant after all these years. 

There was a several pages long article about electronica in Sir Edmund, an add on to the saturday edition od Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. It was more or less an interview with the same content as in most other interviews. However, it mentioned that Electrnica 2 is due for release as soon as February... Would thath be a mistake in the article or has it been pulled forward?