Jean-Michel Jarre - Greatest hits for nerds
"Classic futurism is back," we thought after Jarre's performance on Palace Square in Brussels. Or at least something like that. What we saw was visionary but sometimes also predictable, amazing and exhausting. A mix of technological bravado and musical repetition. Jarre remains Jarre, but is that enough today?
Latan we're being honest: we expected it to be visually a bit more bald. And Jean-Michel Jarre solo on stage, that would feel more intimate, we thought. Partly came out, but the result was... mixed.
There were close-ups and there was even a headcam during Oxygène 2, so you could follow his hands and feet in real time. That gave a feeling of closeness for a while, but soon felt a bit gimmicky. As if he wanted to prove: "Look, I'm really doing it live!" Only... who still doubted that?
The location itself did not exactly cooperate. The Palace Square, stately and royal, yes, but not exactly designed as a concert venue. The stage was set up at the top of the Palace Square, right across our king's home, the audience was lower. As if you were sitting in an inverted amphitheater looking at an artist high in the distance. You could see him move, but he wasn't really present.
And what was perhaps most surprising: where Jarre used to make cities part of his light decor (from the Houston skyline, over the flanks of the Matterhorn, to the facades of the Heize Palaces) the Royal Palace literally remained in the dark. No projections, no play of light, no interaction. A missed opportunity: if anyone knows how to make architecture speak to synthesizer, it is Jarre. Here the palace was reduced to a set piece. Or just say: decor flard. Would Filip and Mathilde have secretly watched through an open window?
Visually? Impressive. The AI-generated images during tracks like Brutalism and Zoolookologie bombarded you with color, geometry and abstraction. An overload that was somewhere between Kandinsky, rave culture and screensaver. Very nicely synchronized, down to the millisecond. But everything was so controlled that it sometimes became clinical. No room for noise, by chance. Everything under control. Or: everything under algorithm.
At times it seemed like you were not watching a concert, but an installation in a museum of digital art, with Jarre as a guard occasionally pressing a button himself.
The setlist, on the other hand, pleasantly surprised: Arpégiateur was an unexpected relic from the 'Les Concerts En Chine' era (1981), and is valuable on the setlist during this tour, while the song remained in the record cabinet during other live performances over the past forty years. Magnetic Fields 1 opened the concert with a faster pulse than before, as if trying to keep the audience awake in advance in the leaden heat.
And then there was Zoolookologie, which still sounds like a sampled childhood dream on speed live, with voices that seem to come from forgotten phone booths. Rarely played live and that's a shame, because it remains one of his most experimental and progressive tracks.
Oxygène 2 got an unexpected, brutal noise intro of half a minute. No idea if that was improvisation or just a preset called "sonic chaos", but it worked surprisingly well.
And then: Exit. Yes, again with Edward Snowden warning us about data danger. Only... how many people in the audience wouldn't rather interpret that video as a Netflix trailer? And Zero Gravity (Above & Beyond Remix), complete with EDM drop and visuals reminiscent of a rave in space... It popped, yes. But also: was this Jarre, or a Daft Punk tribute on Tomorrowland?
The choice to bring four songs from 'Oxymore' was logical, since it is his most recent studio project. Sex In The Machine had more punch live than expected, although it got a bit stuck in the conceptual. Epica did work: a piece of stirring trance that dragged the audience along.
Striking: the versions were adjusted, slightly rougher, slightly less clinical than on the album. Good idea, because 'Oxymore' was originally developed for a 360° listening room in IRCAM. Here it just had to stay up between concrete, sweat and summer heat.
And then this: with the Oxygène 4 remix, look not only at the visuals, but also at his feet. Jean-Michel Jarre is dancing. Not just like that, he jumps, swings, balances between instruments like an electro-yogi on Vodka Red Bull. Almost seventy-seven years, but those who don't know, think he's just enthusiastically multitasking between a mixer and a trampoline. His hands betray his age. But his energy on stage is still 220 volts, without a transformer.
The concert was an experience, that's for sure. But not without comments. It was grand, but also distant. Visually stunning, but sometimes empty in terms of content. Technologically impressive, but emotionally cool.
Where the 'Starmus' concert (May 2024, in Bratislava, Slovakia) was an introduction to Jarre's universe, this performance felt more like a compilation for connoisseurs. A greatest-hits-for-nerds, with room for risks, but also for convenience.
Source: https://damusic.be/live/jean-michel-jar ... -5383.html
However, in the review, some aspects of the concert are evaluated negatively, while Jarrepeggiator writes only positive comments about Jarre. 
