Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe IV (1981) [video] | Hacker News Reader

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

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201 pointspmoriarty109 comments

For the electronic music geeks, JMJ presents the gear he used to make this album: https://youtu.be/ctOhwRGdVvo

About the "matrisequencer" and "digisequencer": the matrisequencer was conceived and built by Michel Geiss, an engineer who worked with Jarre for more than 20 years, from discreet components. It was horribly complex and expensive.

In the early 90s, Geiss rebuilt it anew as the "digisequencer", with a tactile interface driving an Atari ST and using MIDI instead of CV/gate.

The matrisequencer was only hand-built once; IIRC however the digisequencer software and design may have been publicly available at some point and several may have been built.

Thanks for that video - that was amazing. Makes you appreciate his music even more.

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...

Similar music can be made purely by using computers, but what's inside computers today is digital, while all this gear was analog. Also, the physical interface of all those synths can not yet be reproduced inside a computer, that's still dependent on outboard gear or simulations such as graphical buttons/sliders, etc.

There's been a huge resurgence of modular synthesizers and analog gear in the last decade or so, as people appreciate their advantages over trying to do everything on a computer.

You can simulate the analog circuits with good precision on a computer.

However, how you interface with them might not be comparable to turning knobs on an actual circuit

Fits inside your phone, my friend. Phone... :)

Kind of. As others have mentioned, the way you play an instrument is pretty important. It isn't hard to see the difference between playing a real harp and playing its software analog (no pun intended) on a keyboard. It may be a bit harder to understand how an actual modular synth is different if you have never spent any time playing one.

Of course, the software based synths are more practical and easy to deal with since you can automate everything easily, things are reliable, never go out of tune and you can fit an obscene amount of sound-generation into a small device. Not to mention that your DAW will give you a lot more flexibility than those old monster mixing desks gave you.

I also think the limitations are important. While Jarre's setup from way back when may have looked impressive, it is still extremely limited compared to what even amateurs have available to them today. So he had to make everything count.

(If you want an interesting counterpoint: Deadmau5 mostly makes music by editing MIDI on a computer -- still, he has 2-3 huge modular analog synths. Hans Zimmer actually plays keyboards and mostly composes orchestral works, but he still uses modulars from time to time)

Yes, using the actual device gives some artistic freedom that's hard to control with a mouse and keyboard.

Though you could try mapping some of it to a Midi instrument that allows for things like pitch bend (not sure if it's possible though)

You can get a lot of MIDI to CV/Gate interfaces today, and some modulars even let you manage presets so you can at least store parameter values. But I think the hands-on experience of playing the instrument is important. Of rewiring it as you go, of having happy accidents when you plug the wrong wire into the right socket.

Even something as seemingly inconsequential as the physical resistance in a knob can make a difference. For instance, I have one synth that has a very light filter cutoff knob and one that has a slow and heavy one. This tiny bit of tactile difference invites different kinds of uses. The light knob invites me to flick it rapidly -- the heavy one doesn't invite that kind of playing so you end up sweeping it more slowly.

I think the best example I've seen was a friend of mine playing a Doepfer Dark Energy synthesizer using a Dark Time sequencer. You can make the sequencer skip and jump by flipping switches to make it repeat a section or restart the sequence etc. So with without changing the pattern at all he made this entire performance just by creatively messing with the timing and playback.

This hadn't really occurred to me when playing similar instruments on a computer before. You would have had to make a very conscious decision to do exactly what he did in the software, but given the physical interface of the sequencer, this came naturally.

Wow. What I never really understood is: how did those people finance the gear? OK, in '81 JMJ was already famous, and for the original Oxygene in '76 he probably only had a fraction of the stuff you see in this video, but still: those machines were crazy expensive. Even one of them would have put most musicians in debt.

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.

He was backed by French government after the launch of its first album.

France, Italy, UK are places that values and market local culture very agressively since...who knows, centuries?

I like to think he gets a small cut every time a crane game plays the melody from Oxygene Pt. 4.

Wow, thank you for posting that video, incredible to see all that old gear still in perfect working condition, wired up and ready to go.

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 Romance '76.

If anyone shares my taste, please please please post some more recommendations! :)

Tangerine Dream - Le Parc was also the base of Street Hawk soundtrack (and extremely iconic for 80s TV shows).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl_I1qHjihU

Yeah! I remember when I watched Street Hawk as a child and my dad, a huge Tangerine Dream fan, recognized the sound track from the other room.

They have a 2-volume CD set with some of their movie soundtracks, see https://www.discogs.com/Tangerine-Dream-The-Hollywood-Years-....

They were quite active in that space. Quoting wikipedia:

> The group created over sixty soundtracks which include those for the films Sorcerer, Thief, Risky Business, The Keep, Firestarter, Legend, Near Dark, Shy People, and Miracle Mile. They also composed the score for the video game Grand Theft Auto V.

Some of Mike Oldfield works also fit the style. Try Songs Of Distant Earth for example.

I listened a lot to Tangerine Dream in the 1980s. Poland is my favorite (they've made tons of records). I guess you already now about Klaus Schultze and Edgar Froese...

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.

Oh, wow, I did not know he was now a member of TD. I see he joined in 2014. The defining albums of his (that I enjoy most) are from the mid 2000s.

William Orbit.

Completely prolific and varied but the standard is just so high

Try his entire catalogue.

Here are just a couple of highlights:

Who Owns the Octopus? - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AX8lmn1tk4c

Water from a Vine Leaf - https://open.spotify.com/track/00z9Rax2KTHqKLKYnGHzNk

Brand New Bong - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ELrdoimfed0

Montok Point - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIPhxU0vZh0

As an Orbit fan, I remember sitting in a car in the late 90s hearing his very distinctive sound. That's weird, I thought, Radio 1 (UK pop station) doesn't usually play William Orbit.

It was a pre-release of Madonna's new album Ray of Light - produced by Orbit and very much his style. I think he's gone off the boil recently, but Strange Cargo 3 and Hinterland-era Orbit still holds up.

From roughly the same era as Jean-Michel Jarre's heyday, there is the little known Dutch group Peru (aka Nova):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(Dutch_band)

https://www.discogs.com/artist/98910-Peru

I particularly liked their album "Constellations".

Different in style but hot on the heels of Oxygene, there was the French group Droids, which scored a Star Wars-inspired hit in Europe with "The Force", built on it with the album "Star Peace" and then left the planet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dro%C3%AFds

https://www.discogs.com/Droids-Star-Peace/master/36264

A modern contender is Stellardrone, from Lithuania:

https://stellardrone.bandcamp.com/

Peru’s Constellations reminds me a lot of TD. Great tips, thank you!

Klaus Schulze, Ashra, Cluster, Harmonia...

On the more pop side, there's the whole genre of "minimal wave" of the early 80s. I am building a playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/ivzhao/playlist/1ti0pgDyCrf1FT... Many of them reissued on vinyl by http://minimalwave.com/

Or trace who Brian Eno have worked with always help too.

Check out Laurie Spiegel too, who worked at Bell Labs in the '70s and '80s I think. She's absolutely brilliant. And fun fact, she composed music that also ended up on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NChqEEz31eE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzOJtZYsGSA

Add Kitaro (JP) to the list...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitar%C5%8D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONjMiLMw66g

Kraftwerk

Vangelis

Kitaro

Klaus Doldinger (esp. Constellation)

If you can't find something let me know.

Enjoy!

Kraftwerk+++

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.

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.

Special recommendation for Dance of the Firebird.

Tomita's music is fantastic. I love his version of Holst's The Planets. I haven't listened to his music in years though, so I just now found out he passed away last year!

Yes, good call. Snowflakes are dancing is a favorite.

Also if you can find it - Steve Tibbets.

Just became his 7th fan on Deezer :)

Synergy (Larry Fast).

you may also like:

- axess: https://www.discogs.com/Axess-Chamaeleon/release/544829 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkcvDi_J-Ks

- Danger in Dream: https://www.discogs.com/Danger-In-Dream-Entrance/release/555... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qHqMh2pono

- Christopher Franke did some great solo stuff after his time at TD.

I'm going to leave this here. IMHO one of the best covers of Logos.

Tangerine Dream - Logos cover by Klauss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZb9Gb5lSpY

Jean Michel Jarre was an early musical love of mine, which says a lot since I'm only 26.

I could not believe that, when I first heard it, Oxygene II was recorded in the 70s. With a simple, small multitrack recorder.

It honestly is a great example of using simple and minimal components to create something that ultimately sounds far more wonderful and complex as a whole. It's not to say that complex is good, it's more that the simplicity coming across as complex is awesome.

For me, II captures that but, despite how great they are, the others in Oxygene don't quite hit it like II does.

Check it out!

Same for me. I just learned that INTJs listen way too much to trance music :-). No wonder, when I first came across Jarre as a kid I was hooked for life. Many of his soundscapes seem to reside deep inside my brain.

I usually come up as INFP and, more rarely, INTP so I think it may have something to do with the IN part :) I dislike dance clubs but I love trance and Jarre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q00HQwO2Sg

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.

If you like Jean-Luc Ponty check out Alan Holdsworth (also played with Ponty on a number of tracks), Pat Metheny, Paul Winter, Leomoon, Return to Forever, John Abercrombie.

Thank you and the parent. GP's suggestions were pretty much the road I was on but clearly lost my way. Think there's more than enough here for a nice work commute playlist :)

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.

That's a lot of knobs. Knobs are the ultimate general purpose machine. They can make music, or macaroni. Knobs can also make knobs, which accelerates our ability to make knobs. Artificial dexterity running on cheap knobs will one day force us to deal with a world without work.

Sounds great too.

Your comment is hilarious, but as I deal with UIs a lot, the sheer complexity of all those knobs kind of astounds me that he can deal with it all, and in real time to make music.

Wow.

I've loved his music since the late 70's, it's great to hear it again.

Everything in direct access, and everything at a fixed place.

Synthesizer interfaces are really interesting: a digital (or even hybrid) one quickly gets to a level of complexity where "one knob per function" really is impossible or too expensive, but good UIs retain as much of that as possible. A display and a few buttons is cheap to make, but impossible to tweak on-the-fly. The interface has a large impact on how a synth feels to play and which of its abilities are used.

Good points, thanks!

Loads of physical knobs is the most intuitive UI for this kind of thing. You can find the control you want to tweak by combination of it's position and touch very fast and in many cases without purposefully looking at the thing.

When we tried to build touch based mixing/lighting console (large capacitive touch panels were significantly cheaper than loads of physical knobs and motorized faders even ~5 years ago) we found this out very fast and scrapped the whole project.

For synthesizer control, people probably aren't that dependent on using it without looking, but the part of quickly finding what you want to tweak still stands.

> You can find the control you want to tweak by combination of it's position and touch very fast and in many cases without purposefully looking at the thing.

I really wish car makers would rediscover this fact.

Total guess, I've never seen one of these things in person, but: guessing that the knobs have some logical relationship to each other, like knobs in one row share a subject, and moving to a knob left or right changes the same thing, but more in one way than another way.

Also, one reason I still like physical books is that when I'm looking for something that I've read before, I know it's on a left or right page, and whether it's top, middle or bottom. There's probably a mind theory that explains that, and knob location is probably related. Guess.

Maybe this also has something to do with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

But to me it's all just knobs.

It is all just knobs. There are different standard types of modules - oscillators to make a sound, filters to shape the colour, envelope generators and low frequency modulation sources to control how it changes over time - and once you learn the main types you're good to go on most modulars. (Except for some of the weird new ones that have unusual modules you probably haven't used before.)

Is it a good interface? No. It's a terrible interface. Ironically it severely limits what you can do, because your arms are only long enough to reach a few feet - unless you wear roller skates.

If you need a module you don't have you can't complete a patch. You can only get more modules by buying them, and then they take up space whether you use them or not. They're priced somewhere between sort-of cheap and unbelievably insanely expensive.

When you make a patch, It's impossible to reproduce it with perfect accuracy. It takes a long time and copious notes to reproduce complex patches with imperfect accuracy, and any half-way complicated patch disappears into a mess of wires that's very hard to disentangle - conceptually, and literally.

I'm half a fan. I like some of the sounds, especially from the Major Name brands played by people who know what they're doing. But I also wish we could move on and start making software more interesting, more controllable, and better sounding.

The things you mention are artistic limitations - tbey are features, not bugs.

I don't know for certain, but I have very strong doubts that whatever JMJ is doing with those knobs has anything to do with the music. Usually musicians play, and sound engineers deal with the knobs. JMJ doesn't play, so somebody else is playing in his place (if the music isn't simply recorded). The knobs might do something, or JMJ is just pulling a show of how technological his music is.

EDIT: read elsewhere in the thread that those are modular synths, so I guess he might be in charge of making the nice whirling sound. Still, it's not like he's someone playing on a keyboard - where every single key is an option. Most of the knobs will be preconfigured to produce exactly that sound (it's the same as in the record) and the ones he's turning are probably doing a few definite things.

I far prefer this setup compared to memorizing some 5 level deep menu structure accessible through a scroll wheel and two or three selector buttons. Humans are pretty good at remembering spatial arrangements.

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. Also, Jarre was invited by the Chinese government to play, unlike Wham he did not have his publicists petitioning for it. He had gone over to a university there to meet students and show them synthesizer technology. He even left some schematics so they could build their own.

It was also said to be the most widely listened to live broadcast in history, with over 1 billion listeners, though this is tricky to confirm.

>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.

Sure, but "pop music" is also used as a stylistic term, not just about mere popularity. Some jazz and classical works have been on the top-40, but that doesn't make them "pop music" in the first sense.

Wham, however, where a pure 80s pop group, if there ever was one.

There is a documentary about JMJ's trip and his series of concerts in China in 1981, which for some stupid rights ownership reason is no longer available (afaict). One curious fact I learned from this film was that the concert in Shanghai required so much electric power that they had to actually switch off the power in the entire city during the concert. At least that's what JMJ tells his then wife Charlotte Rampling in a taxi before the concert.

Other than that, the sound of this album, Concerts in China, was absolutely mind blowing then and still remains a landmark in electronic music. Big fan of JMJ and especially his concerts in China series.

I recently saw a documentary on the early years of Kraftwerk; it was one of those when you start watching it without expectations just to get your mind blown and busy for weeks after watching it.

I'd love to see a collection of these; the visionaries of the 70s and 80s, and I might include Jodorowsky's Dune at the end.

Can't upvote this enough. 'Arpeggiator' and 'Souvenir of China', both of which only appeared on the Concerts in China CD, are superb. Jarre at his absolute peak.

By the way, Jean Michel Jarre just played a concert in Israël at the Dead Sea against difficult weather conditions.

It was done to promote an ecological message as effect of global warming can be seen in this specific area, see more info about his show on the official website.

https://www.jmj-israel.co.il/en/index.html

Jean Michel Jarre - Rendez-Vous Houston (VHS), 1986

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iVQ2o-PI9M

Fantastic collection of TV sound bites begins at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iVQ2o-PI9M&t=57

This love of some french artist in Houston felt odd when I last rewatched this, about ten years ago. Loved the enthusiasm and openness shown in this video.

This is fantastic, thanks for posting it. I'd forgotten about the Rendezvous Houston concert. The studio version of Rendezvous was also my first ever CD.

This exact video was my first (and only :) ) purchased pre-recorded VHS (in like 1991 or so, I think). I still have it.

The last song on the Rendez-Vous album, Dernier Rendez-vous (Ron's Piece), has an interesting backstory -

"The last track on the album was originally scheduled to include a saxophone part recorded by astronaut Ron McNair on the Space Shuttle Challenger, making it the first piece of music to be recorded in space, but on 28 January 1986, 73 seconds after lift-off, the shuttle disintegrated and the entire Challenger crew were killed. The track was dedicated to McNair and the other astronauts on board Challenger.[3] On the album the saxophone part is played by saxophonist Pierre Gossez." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendez-Vous_(Jean-Michel_Jarre...

The Houston concert received a lot of extra attention because Ron McNair was meant to play sax for the piece Last Rendez-Vous, which usually is presented dedicated to him as "Ron's Piece". Then Challenger blew up, and Jarre considered cancelling until people at NASA convinced him otherwise. So while I'm sure Houston would have welcomed Jarre without it, that concert got a special role as a celebration of the astronauts of Challenger.

Ron's Piece is one of my favourite pieces of music and haunting enough and sad enough on its own, but the history of it makes it even sadder.

Ah.. I had assumed that meaning behind "Ron's piece" was that Ron hailed from Houston... and that JMJ dedicated the piece to Ron because of the recent tragedy.

I was there and just the right age to be really excited about it. 1986 was a rough time in the Houston economy with the price of oil in the toilet, office buildings standing empty, and sad gestures like the city handing out "I'm Houston Proud!" bumper stickers trying to bolster the city's reputation in any way. This concert was an enormous free public event for the whole city, international and futuristic. He brought a Laser Harp! It was super exciting.

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.

In contrast, I think Kraftwerk is timeless. Imagine this with the same staging as the China concert: https://youtu.be/NL3NqfFTec8?t=25m5s

I feel the opposite. Some of Jarre's individual tracks will certainly feel dated - e.g. Computer Weekend for example, and frankly a lot of the Images album. Interestingly it's largely the most playful ones, that toy with sounds that now sound overused and "too obvious", and because many of them come off of as childish.

While I love Kraftwerk, a lot of Kraftwerk's sound fall in the "Images" category for me - they are as iconic as Jarre for those who listen to electronic music, but many of the tracks are also much simpler, and fit a pop-music model much closer, to the extent that it's easier to hear their direct influence on a lot of synth-pop for example. As a result, on one hand they sound more familiar, but much of their music has also often been placed in an era by people influenced by it in a way Jarre's music hasn't.

Some of Jarre's newer music, ironically - to me at least -, seems more likely to be affected by the same effect. E.g. Metamorphoses, Geometry of Love and Teo and Tea all have tracks that on hand more timely for when they were released, and at the same time that to me already date them more.

Jarre was classically educated, and in a way I think you could say that his more classically inspired compositions date better than his more pop/dance inspired pieces, because the former follow a structure that - while the instruments were new and different - is a structure we recognise from music that is quite timeless. Sure, they don't sound like they're meant to be played in a club tonight, but I think kids who haven't heard them before would have far more problems placing them in the right decade than with Kraftwerk.

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.

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.

I despise Kraftwerk and love Jarre.

It's all just a matter of taste.

This kind of music represents such a huge chunk of the spirit of that era. A post space age leaning toward mainstream tech culture.

1997 concert in Moscow on Sparrow's Hills (Воробьёвы Горы) with Russian Airforce participating:

https://youtu.be/pFNlcNpUIk4?t=118

Attendance: 3.5 million! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_concerts

Music for Supermarkets is absolutely amazing.

"notable for having only a single copy pressed, and the subsequent, deliberate destruction of its master plates, effectively making the copy unique."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_pour_Supermarché

Live version of Oxygene.

https://youtu.be/H9UzNh_2TXk

Not a digital interface in sight. I don't know much about synthesizers, but the kit used definitely looks vintage.

I will always associate his name with 'Oxygene' and the soundtrack to the movie 'Gallipoli'.

His work really made me want a Sequential Prophet 5 synth back in the 80's. Never got one, but I see now that Dave Smith Instruments has released the Prophet 6, based on the same concepts, but improved... [0]

[0] - https://www.davesmithinstruments.com/product/prophet-6/

Much of the equipment consists of analog modular synths.

If that intrigues you, definitely check out the recent documentary on the topic "I Dream of Wires" (http://www.idreamofwires.org/). It is on Netflix streaming, but there's also an extended version that is a bit more geeky. The documentary does a great job of covering synthesizers from the Moog days to the present revival of analog synths. Interesting stuff.

Also see the Muffwiggler forums[1], the largest modular synth community on the internet.

[1] - https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/index.php

Here the full 1981 China concert video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTyAtn177zo

Is he really playing that music live as shown in the video, the knobs he twirls doesn't seem to match up with the music change.

This section: https://youtu.be/NsxMRz477jM?t=179

The Social Network featured a lot of analog soundtrack from Trent Reznor. e.g. Swarmatron music analog instrument https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuM4yBFI03E

To all Space Shuttle lovers out there, this video clip for JMJ's Rendez-Vous #4 is pretty amazing: https://youtu.be/tuuWw7OSqIo — I have always loved this song :-)

Is that an early Synclavier in the back past the keyboards? With the 8" floppy drives?

It's actually a Fairlight CMI. So far ahead of it's time it was like alien tech! 16-bit sampler/synth, light pen you could enter notes into the sequencer or edit waveforms... all in 1979! http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/fairlight_cmi.php

Jean Michel Jarre is a genius.

is this mono?

Not sure what this is doing here, presumably because of the electronic devices on his stage? Sure, he was an early adopter of sampling technology, but he probably also invented the "turning knobs on the DJ equipment just for show" malpractice and most certainly built up huge fake device installations on stage.

Not sure either but greatly appreciated.

So please don't flag.

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Exactly my point, - I find it interesting.

Can't point out exactly why though.

>but he probably also invented the "turning knobs on the DJ equipment just for show" malpractice and most certainly built up huge fake device installations on stage.

Those are modular synths. And there's nothing "for show" about them, this is not DJing. He tweaks filters, and other such things.

That's part of what contemporary mainstrea DJ do too. And it's not always gimmicky; a low pass filter as a bridge-cut to slowly restore the full sound (such as the intro of Armand Van Helden - You don't know me) is a very common idiom and has a clear musical emotional impact on people.

What he's turning knobs on are modular synths. The knob is how you make sound. [1] A lot of the background loops are of course already sequenced, but Jarre and his team definitely played the music live.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBEZF2pAbMg

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