Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Aqanique]

Hi everyone!

I'm not sure if someone has done this already, but I've attempted to "remaster" the Place De La Concorde concert by taking FanJarre's audio bootleg of it and syncing it up to the original 4K remaster created by Jarre Bootlegs Concerts.

Since the 4K remaster had some audio overlapping from the original broadcast's sound and the studio tracks that the uploader edited in to give the concert its sound in stereo, I decided to try and fix the issue by removing the sound from the original remaster entirely and using FanJarre's audio bootleg to make everything feel more "live", since it also had a really nice reverb added to everything.

Of course there were some things that I had to edit myself, like extending the audience cheering at the start of the concert and having to try and create smooth extended transitions between some tracks towards the end of the concert to keep everything in sync (since the bootleg had some shorter intervals between them than the actual broadcast did), but overall I'm really happy with how everything turned out in the end considering that this is my first time trying to do something like this.



EDIT: Due to the recent wave of takedowns being issued by SME, you can now find the full remaster in this MEGA file:

https://mega.nz/folder/Kl4XQbKR#9IJMntauEpibp2fiDqEoDg

[Richard-Eastham]

Incredible - thank you! Absolutely love the graphics from Place de la Concorde. I've seen the concert film before, but it struck me watching this again just now how certain visual themes seem to recur for Jarre. Look at these: Oxygene Pt.5 from 1979 and Azimuth, forty five years' later in 2024,

[Richard-Eastham]

Rendezvous Bratislava (2024) and another visual from 1979

[Richard-Eastham]

Visual for Equnoxe Pt. 4 in 1979 and Chronologie Pt. 4 during Europe In Concert, 1993

[dzoolook]

Hi everyone!

I'm not sure if someone has done this already, but I've attempted to "remaster" the Place De La Concorde concert by taking FanJarre's audio bootleg of it and syncing it up to the original 4K remaster created by Jarre Bootlegs Concerts.

Since the 4K remaster had some audio overlapping from the original broadcast's sound and the studio tracks that the uploader edited in to give the concert its sound in stereo, I decided to try and fix the issue by removing the sound from the original remaster entirely and using FanJarre's audio bootleg to make everything feel more "live", since it also had a really nice reverb added to everything.

Of course there were some things that I had to edit myself, like extending the audience cheering at the start of the concert and having to try and create smooth extended transitions between some tracks towards the end of the concert to keep everything in sync (since the bootleg had some shorter intervals between them than the actual broadcast did), but overall I'm really happy with how everything turned out in the end considering that this is my first time trying to do something like this.

Hi!

Jarre Bootlegs Concert Channel is mine, so, if you want something to do a good job with JMJ concerts, just tell me.

[Aqanique]

Incredible - thank you! Absolutely love the graphics from Place de la Concorde. I've seen the concert film before, but it struck me watching this again just now how certain visual themes seem to recur for Jarre. Look at these: Oxygene Pt.5 from 1979 and Azimuth, forty years' later in 2024,

I was thinking the same thing when it came to Jarre's visuals! Glad I'm not the only one who seems to think that he likes to keep certain visual elements present during his concerts.

When I watched the concert film of him performing in Barcelona during his EiC tour, I noticed how he seemed to blend photos of real people and draw some colourful and/or exaggerated features over them, similar to the PDLC concert visuals. You can kind of see similarities in these "exaggerations" during EiC's Second Rendez-Vous, with the drawn hands over edited photos of real people, like with the eyes drawn over this photo of someone in PDLC:



Sometimes I do wish he'd bring back these kind of visuals for his tours, they're really unique in my opinion and have a kind of surreal feeling to them, but I understand that probably won't be happening any time soon with his keen interest for these new AI visuals he's been using recently. (Which have their own charms to them too!)

Another thing that I personally think that Jarre really puts an emphasis on visually are eyes. I've always assumed it's because of "The Watchers" on the cover of Equinoxe, but they seemed to appear quite often in his concerts' visuals from the late 70s up to the mid 90s:



Whether it's intentional or not, I think it's interesting that he likes to include such an emphasis on eyes in his concert visuals, but that could just be me reaching.

[Richard-Eastham]

So pleased I’ve found somebody else fascinated with the visual canon of Jean-Michel Jarre!

His album artworks have the wonderful link with Michel Granger. From the origins of his global career with Oxygene, and then Equinoxe, JMJ then skips a few albums before turning again to Granger for Rendezvous and then – in my opinion, the best of the lot – Chronologie. A few years later, Granger supplies the image for Oxygene 7-13 but after that, nothing.

The Oxygene 3 and Oxygene Trilogy releases were a great opportunity to extend this visual relationship with Granger, but the digital reworking of the original Oxygene artwork were a real let down for me. Flat, artificial and lacking in authenticity or being contemporary and of the time, this was a missed opportunity.

Unlike Pet Shop Boys and their relationship with designer Mark Farrow, or New Order and Peter Savile, JMJ does not have a such as strong, almost continuous link with one visual designer as regards musical releases. But what he does have is this incredible catalogue of imagery used in his live shows. I would be thrilled if this could be compiled into a book – just the pop-art, abstract artwork projection slides from his concerts, from Houston, Lyon, La Défense, EIC, CPLT, Moscow and Egypt. He’s worked with some amazing visual artists on all of these shows, who all deserve credits, and perhaps JMJ and the artists can offer some text to explain what the thinking was behind the images and how they got linked to each musical track.

I was disappointed with the Electronica era show visuals – all geometric shapes and lines – but recently, he’s returned to the more interesting forms of animals, nature, human figures and eyes. The visual aspect to JMJ live shows (the artwork, not just the scale of the shows and the “wow” lasers) was one of the main things for me that set him apart from other artists. And why I became such a huge fan.

Pet Shop Boys have just announced the release of Volume, a 500+ page book charting 40 years of visual materials, from their album covers, to stage costumes. I would love a Jean-Michel Jarre book of images, page after page of JMJ concert artwork, not concert photos, but the artwork as used in the visual design of the shows. I would much prefer this over the anticipated release next year of a book of his collection of vintage synths.

However, where is all this amazing concert artwork now? I recall all the giant Pani projector slides from Docklands were for sale on eBay a few years back and being sold one by one…. I nearly bought one, and I wish I had now. Has the artwork all been scattered to the winds? Will it be impossible to compile such a visual record today? What a legacy there is to be recorded here. Anybody else want to see this?

[Xyxophas]

I’d love to see something like that. Pop art is a style that really speaks to me. I particularly enjoy the La Defense concert mostly because of those gigantic graphics on the skyscrapers. Place de la Concorde is basically one big animation. That was still before lasers became common at concerts. Oxygene 12 will always remind me of that b&w film The Circle of Life, which I first saw during the Oxy Tour ’97, and I was really happy to see it again this year in an AI‑processed form during Robots Don’t Cry. By the way, I think Oxy12 would still fit modern concerts as a dark trance track if it were given a new, dynamic beat. I love the version from Gdańsk and Merzouga, and it could be modernized further.

As for a book of the graphics, you’d need to drop a hint to Aero Prod. Although I suspect getting the licenses to print all the artwork could be a problem. There’s probably a lot of mess to sort out.

[Aqanique]

On the topic of Jean-Michel's concert visuals, I think the closest that we've probably gotten to seeing them in full were in things like the Jarre - Live CD booklet, the La Défense concert magazine, and an issue or two of Conductor of the Masses.

I think it's quite a shame that the different artworks haven't been all collected and been displayed in something like a massive picture book, since I think it would sell really well amongst his many fans across the world and finally give us an insight into what the people who were at such events like Rendez-Vous Houston and Destination Docklands were actually seeing projected on the buildings around them on the night of the concerts.

Maybe if Jarre does another Q&A at the end of this year like he did in 2024, someone could try and ask if he has any plans on making a picture book like this, or at least create a new section of his website that showcases the artworks, like a kind of digital gallery?

[Xyxophas]

My question about the future of Oxyville was selected for last year's Q&A. If there is a Q&A this year, I will ask about the artworks. Maybe I will be lucky again.