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Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

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Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#81

Post by mturmon »

eternalban wrote: post #52

I used to listen non-stop to this album in college, late 80s. Listening to it after all these years, it is still exciting but I don't think JMJ is going to age well. This album with its Chinese street sounds and all the mythology around the trip was heady and amplified the psychological impact. But it also sounds a bit plastic, too much mascara, if you will. I couldn't loop listen this again. Once in a while, sure. I…

I had the chance to see Kraftwerk live in LA a couple of years ago, and it was just amazing. One of the best live shows I've ever seen.

Thematically, they were trying to address the conflicts and tension between us and the technology we create. I had forgotten about these themes from their "Radioactivity" album (from 1975), but they brought it up to date by dropping "Fukushima" into the lyrics as sung that night. It ended up sounding profoundly prescient, like so much of their other work.

I don't think JMJ has anything like the depth that Kraftwerk has. Like you, I've been listening to both since the mid 80s - I had Magnetic Fields on vinyl, but Zoolook on CD. Jarre is mostly simple entertainment for me now, but Kraftwerk makes me think.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#82

Post by rbanffy »

jacquesm wrote: post #71
rusanu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is the son of Maurice Jarre [1], and I heard before how this helped him financially quite a bit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Jarre

That says that Maurice moved to America leaving Jean-Michel with his mom when he was five years old.

Never underestimate the guilt of a distant divorced father.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#83

Post by jacquesm »

teh_klev wrote: post #54
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was the first western pop music concert in China. Wham claims their 1985 concert was the first, that is not correct as this predated it by 4 years. Well, Jarre is not exactly pop music though. Not compared to Wham!

Well, Oxygene reached number two in the UK album charts and Oxygene IV was a hit single reaching number 4 in the UK singles charts. Those were popular music charts, and back then there was a much wider variety of genres of music occupying the top 40's, especially in the UK. I was ~11 years old and for a while you couldn't avoid Jarre on the radio and Top of The Pops.

Don't forget ABBA and the BeeGees. Sometimes it was as if those three were on continuous high-rotation.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#84

Post by jacquesm »

mturmon wrote: post #81
eternalban wrote: post #52

I used to listen non-stop to this album in college, late 80s. Listening to it after all these years, it is still exciting but I don't think JMJ is going to age well. This album with its Chinese street sounds and all the mythology around the trip was heady and amplified the psychological impact. But it also sounds a bit plastic, too much mascara, if you will. I couldn't loop listen this again. Once in a while, sure. I…

I had the chance to see Kraftwerk live in LA a couple of years ago, and it was just amazing. One of the best live shows I've ever seen. Thematically, they were trying to address the conflicts and tension between us and the technology we create. I had forgotten about these themes from their "Radioactivity" album (from 1975), but they brought it up to date by dropping "Fukushima" into the lyrics as sung that night. It…

Jean-Michel Jarre was besides a half decent composer excellent at marketing and a good showman. By comparison Kraftwerk was the more interesting, further ahead of the curve and more geeky. Usually the people that liked the one also like the other to a greater or lesser degree with Vangelis somewhere in the middle and Tangerine Dream somewhere to the far side of JMJ.

What is amazing to me is that when I listen to that music today it does not feel nearly as dated as other music from that era.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#85

Post by Cyph0n »

lomnakkus wrote: post #34
raverbashing wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And today all of this fits inside a computer. Amazing

... and almost all of it is done and/or coordinated in a CPU which is smaller than a stamp and consumes about the same power as a light bulb. It's a bit dated now, but I still find the video "Indistinguishable from Magic"[1] to be quite amazing. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4

You could probably run it (and other stuff!) on a CPU that consumes 1/30th the energy of a light bulb.

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~skadron/cs8535_s11/ARM_Cortex.p...

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#86

Post by nwatson »

zerothlaw wrote: post #48
lucio wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My order was Vangelis, then JMC, then The Alan Parsons P. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q00HQwO2Sg

Same progression for me with a smattering of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, then branching to Jean Luc Ponty - I heard Pulstar on Albedo 0.39 and was hooked.

I just can't get Jean-Luc Ponty out of my system. I read Chronicles of Narnia to JLP's Imaginary Voyage album in 1980 and have been hooked since. I listen to much else, and some of JLP's stuff gets a bit repetitive and formulaic, but he and his band have a track to fit every situation.

For something a bit more experimental from JLP, try "No Strings Attached", https://youtu.be/EzLBZnDppD8 . Great use of technology available at the time. Synthesizer, violin, and tape loop.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#87

Post by Jedd »

secure wrote: post #22

Fans of Jean-Michel Jarre often also like: Tangerine Dream (DE): My favorite recordings are Logos and Poland (both live recordings), but there’s many other great ones, e.g. Force Majeure, Phaedra, Quinoa, … Redshift (UK): Love almost every single album they made. My all-time favorites are Redshift Wild 3, Redshift Wild 2, and Wild (all live recordings). Peter Baumann (DE): I particularly like the first few tracks of…

I'm happy to join in :)

Shpongle and Ott (indeed anything associated with Simon Posford) almost has some Jarre moments, while not really being like Jarre. Chris Nemmo - quite a range from electronic, though releases frustratingly infrequently.

M83 hasn't been mentioned yet. Curiously this is another group that JMJ worked with during his recent Electronica albums, with many of the artists being mentioned here having done collaborations in that set - Yello, Tangerine Dream, The Orb, Hans Zimmer, Air, Massive Attack etc.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#88

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

mturmon wrote: post #37
secure wrote: post #22

Fans of Jean-Michel Jarre often also like: Tangerine Dream (DE): My favorite recordings are Logos and Poland (both live recordings), but there’s many other great ones, e.g. Force Majeure, Phaedra, Quinoa, … Redshift (UK): Love almost every single album they made. My all-time favorites are Redshift Wild 3, Redshift Wild 2, and Wild (all live recordings). Peter Baumann (DE): I particularly like the first few tracks of…

Ulrich Schnauss has several works much in the style of TD - moody, romantic, storytelling. Try "A strangely isolated place."

Ulrich Schnauss is in the current incarnation of TD. He was asked to join just before Edgar Froese died. Schnauss, Thorsten Quaeschning, and Hoshiko Yamane decided to carry on after Froese decided to change his cosmic address (as he put it.)

I've heard the first two albums from them and they're magnificent - exactly what you'd expect if you ran 1970s TD through a wormhole to the present, and gave the music an extra infusion of creativity and passion.

There are a couple of other albums I haven't heard yet, but based on the other two I have very high hopes.

Re: Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video]

#89

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

secure wrote: post #22

Fans of Jean-Michel Jarre often also like: Tangerine Dream (DE): My favorite recordings are Logos and Poland (both live recordings), but there’s many other great ones, e.g. Force Majeure, Phaedra, Quinoa, … Redshift (UK): Love almost every single album they made. My all-time favorites are Redshift Wild 3, Redshift Wild 2, and Wild (all live recordings). Peter Baumann (DE): I particularly like the first few tracks of…

Isao Tomita. Classical music mostly played on a Moog, with an increasing collection of supporting polysynths as the years went by.

Everything up to The Ravel Album is great.

Tomita probably ranks as the only true Moog virtuoso sound designer. Literally nobody else used the instrument quite so creatively, or produced such an incredible range of distinctive sounds with it.

This sounds like a recipe for cheese, but it's anything but. Everyone who owns, uses, or is even slightly interested in modular synthesizers should hear his albums.

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