Analog-Umph wrote:With this album (and the last 3), I can see how much truly Jarre has become irrelevant to electronic music. Which I don't say with any joy.
This album, like the last 3 is nothing but pure noise, neither very intelligent nor emotional. Unfortunately.[... snip long post...]
I'd say I agree with most of what you wrote, but I definitely disagree on Oxygène 3. I honestly think it hit a sweet spot without trying too hard to mimic the original while still feeling like "Oxygène" more or less. That's where Oxygène 7-13 failed IMO. It tried too hard to be like its predecessor and it's really on the edge of a "fan tribute"/"parody" territory (Oxygène 9 and 13 especially). That's why I resent people saying "Oh, Robots Don't Cry should've clearly been on Oxygène 3!". No, it shouldn't! It would've ruined it its "independence" and thus it would fall into the self-parody category.
With regards to EI vs O3, O3 feels to be much more coherent and not so busy - because, if we are to believe JMJ, he limited himself to 8 tracks, just like on the original. With EI I feel like I'm constantly bombarded with seemingly random sounds and instruments. It's like the album is constantly trying to grab my attention with "ear-candy".
And while EI is not a sequel to Équinoxe... it kinda makes the same mistake as Oxygène 7-13 did - I tries too hard to reference the original. The almost direct quote from Équinoxe 1 in The Watchers. Or how the "If the wind could speak" (frankly, one of the better tracks on the album) is the new "Band in the rain". Or how "Infinity" kind of references Équinoxe 5. Or how Movement 6-7-8 tries to mimic the continuity of Équinoxe 5-6-7 - which, by the way, it does very poorly: the transitions are hardly seamless, it's very easy to pinpoint where the bass sound changes (both at start and end of "Machines are learning"); and not only that, when the bass intro of Movement 7 is done the main theme starts 1/16th note too early! (I can't stand how it throws off my brain-metronome); the tempo of Mvt6 (♩ = 100) doesn't match that of Mvt7 (♩ = 97.5).
If someone handed me this album and didn't say it wasn't JMJ I would probably say it's a "JMJ fan tribute" at best (and if Équinoxe 1 wasn't quoted in The Watchers I probably wouldn't even label it as such) - I probably wouldn't have said "oh, that's gotta be JMJ". But then again, to be fair, I probably wouldn't have guessed that Revolutions was JMJ if someone had handed me it in 1988.
