Revolutions - Jean Michel Jarre

Revolutions is Jean Michel Jarre's eighth studio album, released in 1988. As with many of Jarre's albums, it is themed, and in this case the varying revolutions taking place around the world inspire the album. Not simply the obvious theme of violent political turmoil, but also the industrial or computer revolution; at the time this album was produced, computers were becoming an increasing part of everyday life, and such change came with the usual bundle of nameless terror and apprehension with which humanity greets most change.

The album uses a variety of genres to reflect the themes. The first four tracks - Industrial Revolution overture and parts one to three - feature a kind of orchestral-industrial sound, a mixture of stylised factory sounds, heavy synthetic strings and choir. Two tracks, London Kid and Tokyo Kid are heavy-handed tone poems representing the differences between two different lives. Hank Marvin features strongly on London Kid, and Jun Miyake plays trumpet extremely bizarrely on Tokyo Kid, over the top of an equally peculiar, distorted jazz beat.

Dulcie September is paid tribute to in the song September. Dulcie, if you're unaware, was assassinated in 1988, a member of the South African ANC. Choirs of children and a synthesized steel drum sound form a backdrop for strong female vocalisations.

A word about the Roland D-50. Rather new at the time, Jarre took a liking to the preset sounds and basically used them as is. If you can get your hands on a D-50, you'll find even the distinctive rhythm track on Industrial Revolutions Overture is a preset. Hunt around for 'Machine Run', 'Griitarrr 2', 'Motor Orchestra' and 'Kokubo Strings' and hold your own little Jarre concert. Michael Jackson also seemed taken with the D-50, as showcased on 'Bad', and the pizzicato strings from the D-50 are very prominent on Enya's 'Orinoco Flow' - 'Pizzagogo' is the preset to go-go for, I believe.

Tracklist

01 Industrial Revolution Overture (5:11)
02 Industrial Revolution Part 1 (5:10)
03 Industrial Revolution Part 2 (2:17)
04 Industrial Revolution Part 3 (4:13)
05 London Kid (4:28)
06 Revolutions (4:56)
07 Tokyo Kid (5:23)
08 Computer Weekend (4:43)
09 September (4:06)
10 The Emigrant (3:57)

La Cage - Jean Michel Jarre

La Cage is a 1971 pastiche of scary musique concrete and experimental electronics, the very first single by Jean Michel Jarre, five years before Oxygene entranced listeners with its gentle, melodic ambience. It's a three minute fifteen second track, rather discordant, with clanging percussion and a jumpy, random-sounding bassline with ghostly screeches. It relies heavily on the electro-acoustic manipulation of audio tape, and is very, very different to any Jarre tracks you're likely to have heard.

Despite its 1971 release date, the single was actually recorded in 1969, and it says something that Jarre was unable to find anyone willing to release it until the record company Pathé-Marconi rose to the challenge two years later, releasing La Cage on 7" single with a b-side of Erosmachine.

The company's confidence was ill-founded; only one hundred and seventeen copies of La Cage were sold, and the remainder were destroyed. This, of course, makes the single fantastically rare, although the tracks (La Cage and b-side, Erosmachine) were released on a 1978 compilation, 'Made In France', and have popped up on various bootleg recordings.

Erosmachine - Jean Michel Jarre

Erosmachine is the 2:54 b-side to Jean Michel Jarre's 1971 7" single 'La Cage'. Like La Cage, it is an experimental track based around manipulated tape loops and acoustically-altered analogue recordings. In a later interview around the time of Chronologie, Jarre recalls measuring and splicing the magnetic tape to create the background rhythm track, composed of clanging metal and twanged steel rulers, forming a mechanical, machine-like background. The same rhythmic pastiche is re-used in Chronologie Part II as a representation of time passing, this time created with far less effort using a computer.

Erosmachine is a disturbing track, as over these mechanical twangings and grindings is the breathy sound of a woman, gasping and moaning, and electronic chords straight out of early David Cronenberg soundtracks. It's like the theme song to some mad, sexual horror film - the rape scene from 'Tetsuo: The Iron Man', or those penetrating cables from a H.R. Giger painting. And then, at the end, the screaming starts...

Interior Music - Jean Michel Jarre

Interior Music is a special edition album by Jean-Michel Jarre released in 2001 for Bang & Olufsen. It exists only in an edition of 1000 copies, which makes it slightly less exclusive than the Jaguar edition of Aerology which was only obtainable for a brief period by taking a Jaguar car for a test drive. The album contains two tracks, identical apart from vocals, both of which are almost 26 minutes long. The first, Bonjour, Hello, is a musique concrete collage of running water, rustlings and occasional, very-muted piano sounds. There is gentle birdsong later on, and sparse orchestral-sounding chords. Over the top is a constant stream of voices speaking short phrases: 'Hello', 'Bonjour', 'Vous est unique', 'You are beautiful', 'Hey, I'm looking at you!'. The second track, as mentioned earlier, is an instrumental version of the first and, since the voices seem childish and irritating to me, I feel it's the better of the two tracks.

The sentiment behind the track is plausible, if along similar lines to those awful British Telecom adverts of the nineties with Bob Hoskins, or the Nescafé ones which encouraged you to take a packet of biscuits round to the neighbours. The idea of encouraging us all to talk more or just try out being nice to each other is well-meant, but twenty-six minutes of someone saying 'You look great!' and 'I'm watching you!' feels just a little sinister. At best it comes across as some sort of manic self-improvement tape, and at worst you feel as though Bang & Olufsen are actively stalking you.

I have to report, then, that Whispers Of Life, the second track without all the self-hypnosis-esque stuff, is a delightful exercise in ambient music, and preferable by far to the first track. Bloom, a recent iPhone application from Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers produces very similar sounds, actually, or it may remind you of parts of Harold Budd's album The Room. The back of the CD, incidentally, darkly hints at the tracks being excerpts from a new album. It's currently late 2009, and a range of albums have been and gone. Whatever was planned, it appears to exist only in the form of 'Interior Music' now.

Interior Music

1. Bonjour, Hello (25:58)

2. Whispers Of Life (25.56)

Chronologie - Jean Michel Jarre

Chronologie is a 1993 album by French synthesizer musician Jean Michel Jarre. Broadly speaking, the majority of Jarre's studio albums are based around some kind of theme after which the album is titled. Chronologie is no exception, taking time as its basis, which explains the dedication to Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History Of Time'. In concert footage from the period, Jarre's trademark pyrotechnics and projections clearly show how the album's tracks progress through time, from the beginning of the universe through to the evolution of living beings. He even manages to get a splash of sex in there with Chronologie Part 6; it's not everyone who can get away with projecting naughty nuns and hundred-foot high sperm onto surrounding architecture, although Laurie Anderson did have a go with her sending messages to Japan speech. (Obscure reference No. 1)
Chronologie is classic Jarre in many ways. A long, slow-build up in the first part of the recording, leading to a short, snappy track where the second side of the cassette or LP would be - in this case it's Chronologie Part 4, which began life as a beepy little sound for Swatch's range of 'musi-call' watches. Later on, however, there are rap influences, thankfully rhythmic rather than vocal, and Chronologie 7 does use the old Jarre trick of replaying an earlier theme from the album at a slower speed.
But wait - what's that on track three? Remember, this is Jean Michel Jarre, rumoured to be the world's first synthesizer superstar (if you read the popular press and probably don't include Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jan Hammer or indeed, anyone else who's ever picked up a keyboard), he who began a career with disturbingly analogue film scores, the odd bit of tape-spliced Erosmachine and dementedly musique-concrete La Cage. There are lovely warm synths on Oxygene, and then gentle swooshes of Equinoxe, bear in mind. So what's with the electric guitars?
Around this time, Jarre seemed to become friendly with Patrick Rondat, going as far as to produce an album for him, and taking him on tour to add a new and rather pretentious and twiddly twist to the old Jarre favourites. There's not a lot of guitar on the album, actually, and thankfully the alliance didn't last too long. I'm still convinced the live track 'Digisequencer' would be far better with more Digisequencer and less Rondat.
There are eight tracks on Chronologie, and they're numbered 1 to 8 in the traditional Jarre fashion. Chronologie 4 had moderate success as a single and spawned a whole host of remixes by people like Praga Khan, Black Girl Rock and Sunscreem. Chronologie 6 attracted the attention of Slam and Gat Decor, who somehow removed all traces of the original track and produced a set of rather generic dance remixes. I still like them, but not as much as the original.