BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

These low chart positions just wonder me a lot!

Robi wrote:These low chart positions just wonder me a lot!

chart positions....the 70s/80s/90s-equivalent of 'likes'.

I'm loving Oxygene 3! Although my Amazon disc still hasn't arrived (probably got lost with UPS) I took an iTunes music subscription and have been playing the album over and over and over and over!

And that's what I love about it and why, to me, Oxygene 3 continues the lineage of Oxygene and Equinoxe: they all have this quality that makes that you can play them over and over for hours on end without getting bored and loving it all the time.

I can mention single tracks I like most but I haven't actually jumped to any one track once. Each time I just pressed play on Oxygene 14 and listened through the whole album. What a masterpiece!

synthmann wrote: I took an iTunes music subscription and have been playing the album over and over and over and over!

Well I'm doing the same. I think it has something to do with the warm sound and how the tracks transforms into each other that makes it so darn addictive.
It is the work from the genius we once knew.
Al tough the digital sound from CD and Spotify doesn't quite fit my speakers so I have to play it through my dolby digital equalizer
where the bass is turned down and the highs are turned up.
Something like this:

A constant stream of new details keeps appearing.

Chart position has certainly been affected my having separate Oxy3/Oxy trilogy releases.

Funny thing about Oxygene 16 - I've read a decent amount of reviews and most of them (not all, but MOST) - no matter positive or negative - don't seem to acknowledge its existence. I wonder why.

Jote wrote:Funny thing about Oxygene 16 - I've read a decent amount of reviews and most of them (not all, but MOST) - no matter positive or negative - don't seem to acknowledge its existence. I wonder why.

Probably because it sits right in between the very dark, angular 15 (my favourite) and 17 the most melodic track and the album's single. Both tracks - by their huge presence - seem to overshadow 16 ...

It's hard to pick a certain favourite out of the Oxygene 3.
They're all good in their own way. I like part 19 very much and it seem to work great live.
For me part 18 is the most "meh..." track. Somehow just doesn't feel like the traditional Jarre.
When I heard part 18 as a teaser for the album release I got a bit cold. But now I'm happy the rest of the album took a different direction.
Part 14 could make a perfect car commercial add track any day of the week.

What I think both works in and against it's favour (of Oxygene 16) is that it feels a lot like Alive in Bourges. It's a great track, but falls short of the more mysterious and atmospheric 15 and the more traditional part 17.

Docklander wrote:

Analog-Umph wrote:.....

I have to wonder about that myself though. You are right that many sounds here can be had by fiddling with synths. Then again, I fiddled with synths for many years, but never produced anything like Oxy 3. However, that could just be my general ineptitude for wanting to be a Jarre, but something being missing in the DNA...that I readily grant you. It's been a very frustrating strand in my life.

I know that many people find this an adequate album, but that may be because they do not listen much varying kinds of electronic music, or play themselves. When you listen to a lot of variety, you start to see where the quality lives. And when you play synths (or any musical instrument) yourself, you definitely become a scrutinizer of quality. These things go hand in hand.

In my view the album is way too simple, almost like a demo, in need of another 1-2 months of composition, arrangement, and mixing. Quite a few others have come to the same conclusion as myself. It doesn't matter whether this would have been a more melodic album, or a more ambient album, or a mix of both. In both cases, it needed a lot of more work. I know in myself, that if I was making a major new album, I would not have been able to hand in Oxygene 3 to the studio, and call it an album in front of everyone. At most a demo - of where it might head.

Anyhow, if Jarre's happy with it, I am happy for him. We can't all the time produce masterpieces that are the greatest thing ever. I tell you, at times, even the masters do not know how they produced their great/est work/s. Which may have to do with man being a "channel" of something far greater than himself, when he dedicates himself to a greater purpose.

Docklander wrote:On the other hand, I'm not so easily convinced that incredible new landscapes of sound that have never been heard before still exist to be discovered, as they were back in the relative infancy of synthesizers when Jarre began. This claim is often made, but I don't see much evidence for it. The problem is that most "experimental space" is filled with really, really weird stuff, which certainly is different, but it lacks the aesthetic power to redefine a whole emotional world and draw a generation along in its wake. Most examples people end up giving are desiccated outposts in experimental space. Exactly the kind of thing I don't care for and never have. Jarre's work brought emotional warmth to the synthesizer realm. Of course others were going to discover that and follow in his path. They would have discovered it anyway, even if he had not. But he was the world leader in bringing it.

Zoolook is my least favorite Jarre album, for exactly these reasons. He tried to push an emotional warmth too far into eccentric space, and the two just don't go together well. The thing about synthesizers was that they created a genuine new CONTINENT of sounds. Whether that can ever happen again is moot...though I don't rule it out completely. Jean-Michel was in one sense lucky to be a kind of early "Columbus" heading out into that terrain for the first time. Both factors were necessary: his artistic talent and being in the right place at the right time in history. It's also possible, however, that present technology is already capable of producing just about any sound capable of being heard by the human ear. In that case, small, dotted, undiscovered islands of heterodox sound don't amount to the second discovery of a new continent.

IMO, of course.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think, in some way we have hit a ceiling. We've come to an end, one which can only be surpassed via, not the actual transformation of the music, but the very self and the reality in which the self exists. Then new dimensions may open up.

As an analogy, we live in a 3 dimensional space-time continuum, which holds 3 dimensional objects in its reality, but we only ever see two dimensions. If at some point in time, humans were to be able to live in a higher dimensional space, and see/experience 3 or more dimensions, that would be analogous to broadening our experience of perception itself, and thus of the kind of music one would be able to make. There may come a time, when one is able to see the sound they are making and how it actually affects the emotions, the mind, the body, the very matter of the room in which one is. There may come a time where we can see which music is inherently beneficial to listen to and which is not. Things like that, things which are far beyond our current reality.

One could argue for all kind of technological innovations that would deliver the music directly to the brain, but I find all of those unnatural and creepy. You defeat the point of life, if you treat a human being and their body as a robot, that needs just the "right" kind of stimulation.

For sure changing the way we perceive reality would change our experience of it, I just think that if any fundamental change of perception is to occur, it would far surpass anything to do with any technology, whether it is modern or of the future.

On a separate note, I view JMJ as part of the big 5 of EM pioneers. Alongside TD, Schulze, Kraftwerk and Vangelis. You could also add Tomita, Kitarō... When listening to Oxygene for example, you can definitely hear that Jarre was influenced by Schulze's Timewind, which came out just a year before. He himself is very aware that it was the balancing act, of taking that experimental sound and combining it with a more harmonious and melodic (pop) aspect, that made Oxygene what it is.

Analog-Umph wrote:

In my view the album is way too simple, almost like a demo, in need of another 1-2 months of composition, arrangement, and mixing. Quite a few others have come to the same conclusion as myself.

Analogumph you and others that have come to this conclusion
must take time and inward development to understand the nature of the journey.

The journey is necessarily simple simplistic becuase we must travel light.

This means we must take away not add.
By adding you would only increase personal gunk.
When the aim is to remove personal gunk.


The journey Oxygene 3rilogy


Oxygene 14
Our life. Ups downs. Seen much. Been through plenty.
Got the joys. Got the scars.
Wiser for what we have been through.

Oxygene 15
Travelling deeper inside ourself.
Revealing hidden depths.
Revelling in what we discover.

Oxygene 16
Journeying to the edge of our personal universe.
Whereupon we feel expansion feel liberation.
Feel transporting out of ourself.

Oxygene 17
We have left it all behind, our former lives, our past hurts.
Pastures anew.

Oxygene 18
"melancholy otherworldly peace, freed from long suffering" words from Alessandro Fantini

Oxygene 19
Euphoria where we have travelled towards.

Oxygene 20
Our destination's end.



(Analogumph this should make you realise JmJ is beyond your current comprehension.
Once you have sufficient inward development then you will comprehend JmJ ).

plate of chips wrote:

Analog-Umph wrote:

In my view the album is way too simple, almost like a demo, in need of another 1-2 months of composition, arrangement, and mixing. Quite a few others have come to the same conclusion as myself.

Analogumph you and others that have come to this conclusion
must take time and inward development to understand the nature of the journey.

The journey is necessarily simple simplistic becuase we must travel light.

This means we must take away not add.
By adding you would only increase personal gunk.
When the aim is to remove personal gunk.


The journey Oxygene 3rilogy


Oxygene 14
Our life. Ups downs. Seen much. Been through plenty.
Got the joys. Got the scars.
Wiser for what we have been through.

Oxygene 15
Travelling deeper inside ourself.
Revealing hidden depths.
Revelling in what we discover.

Oxygene 16
Journeying to the edge of our personal universe.
Whereupon we feel expansion feel liberation.
Feel transporting out of ourself.

Oxygene 17
We have left it all behind, our former lives, our past hurts.
Pastures anew.

Oxygene 18
"melancholy otherworldly peace, freed from long suffering" words from Alessandro Fantini

Oxygene 19
Euphoria where we have travelled towards.

Oxygene 20
Our destination's end.



(Analogumph this should make you realise JmJ is beyond your current comprehension.
Once you have sufficient inward development then you will comprehend JmJ ).

We all hear something different when we listen to the same music. Hence the different feelings about JMJ lastest album.
I think too that O3 is like a demo. I'm making instrumental electronic music myself and this album seems easier to produced than others.
However, I don't think it relates with the time it took to make it. If I recall correctly, Rendez-vous was also produced in a short period of time (it has old Jarre tunes in it however).

plate of chips wrote:

Analog-Umph wrote:

In my view the album is way too simple, almost like a demo, in need of another 1-2 months of composition, arrangement, and mixing. Quite a few others have come to the same conclusion as myself.

Analogumph you and others that have come to this conclusion
must take time and inward development to understand the nature of the journey.

The journey is necessarily simple simplistic becuase we must travel light.

This means we must take away not add.
By adding you would only increase personal gunk.
When the aim is to remove personal gunk.


The journey Oxygene 3 trilogy..

Oxygene 14: Walking the dog in the evening
Oxygene 15: Going inside again (With the dog)
Oxygene 16: Watching tele
Oxygene 17: Making some soup
Oxygene 18: Toilet visit
Oxygene 19: Looking out the window
Oxygene 20: Still looking out the window

(Plate of shit: This should make you realise JmJ is beyond your current comprehension.
Once you have sufficient inward development then you will comprehend JmJ)

plate of chips wrote:

Analog-Umph wrote:

In my view the album is way too simple, almost like a demo, in need of another 1-2 months of composition, arrangement, and mixing. Quite a few others have come to the same conclusion as myself.

Analogumph you and others that have come to this conclusion
must take time and inward development to understand the nature of the journey.

The journey is necessarily simple simplistic becuase we must travel light.

This means we must take away not add.
By adding you would only increase personal gunk.
When the aim is to remove personal gunk.


The journey Oxygene 3rilogy


Oxygene 14
Our life. Ups downs. Seen much. Been through plenty.
Got the joys. Got the scars.
Wiser for what we have been through.

Oxygene 15
Travelling deeper inside ourself.
Revealing hidden depths.
Revelling in what we discover.

Oxygene 16
Journeying to the edge of our personal universe.
Whereupon we feel expansion feel liberation.
Feel transporting out of ourself.

Oxygene 17
We have left it all behind, our former lives, our past hurts.
Pastures anew.

Oxygene 18
"melancholy otherworldly peace, freed from long suffering" words from Alessandro Fantini

Oxygene 19
Euphoria where we have travelled towards.

Oxygene 20
Our destination's end.



(Analogumph this should make you realise JmJ is beyond your current comprehension.
Once you have sufficient inward development then you will comprehend JmJ ).

OMG, what a load of crap. Where you drunk when you wrote this?

plate of chips wrote:This means we must take away not add.
By adding you would only increase personal gunk.
When the aim is to remove personal gunk.

The fact is, I've heard many, many better albums, and even quick synthesizer demos than this 3rd O album, harmonically, melodically, timbrally, arrangement-wise, thematically, emotionally, conceptually...

(Analogumph this should make you realise JmJ is beyond your current comprehension.
Once you have sufficient inward development then you will comprehend JmJ ).

This is not a dig at you, but in the course of my long observation of many different systems and people, usually the people making such claims, are the ones who are least developed, according to their own measure of development. What I have noticed is usually those who claim high levels of such achievement, are the ones who at the bottom, whilst others who do not claim any such achievement are actually above that person making the claim.

I told you to leave behind all new age/mysticism philosophy, it destroys your mind. I've dealt with people who went into all that, and have had their lives destroyed. Because they thought they were learning higher level wisdom and self-empowerment. The review of each track that you gave, tells me much of your inner philosophy. Separate from the album review, I can tell you that you should be really careful what you take on as "the truth". People are being deceived in droves in current times. And I am specifically talking about false spiritual philosophies, which are nothing more than mental concepts and have no spiritual dimension to them at all, other than to appear so. These teachings often require energetic/paranormal experiences to enforce their legitimacy and put an on air of awe, wonder and divinity. But they are ultimately detrimental to the self.

What is really happening here, is not personal or spiritual development being a measure of understanding, rather it is subjective perception of the material at hand. It means something to you, in its current state. That is great. But for me it does not.

I'm glad you appreciate the album, I really am, but from my point of view it needed more work. And the same could be said of many other artists, when they get into their later years. Their work becomes a little too tame, too watered down, in comparison to the art they did in their youth. If you want to make the same level of quality in your older years, you have to put in more effort, take more time. Even masters such as John Williams are winding down, quality wise. It's the natural order of life.



(As an aside, even JMJ himself admitted much later on after release, that Oxy 7-13, also needed more fine tuning, before it was released.)