Today is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the New Era of Jean-Michel Jarre and his fans! This is actually quite a significant anniversary, in my opinion.
The first single from Electronica 1: The Time Machine, ’Glory’ with M83 was released on this day exactly a decade ago. Jean-Michel Jarre’s great comeback started with this electo pop single, this was the first release of the Jarre we have seen in the last 10 years. Before this single, there hasn’t been any new singles or albums for 8 years, since Teo&Tea. Of course, we know that it took him years to finish the Electronica albums, but since he wasn’t in the news, some fans even assumed that he is more or less retired, or at the very least, the times of him achieving greatness are over. And those people could not be more incorrect about that…
There was a huge anticipation before the release of this. Some people loved it, others hated it, just like with any post-Equinoxe Jarre album, he lost some fans and also gained many new fans. Every time Jean-Michel Jarre reinvents himself according to the times and has a new release, he is opening a door for a new generation of fans to enter his world of music. I’m mentioning this, because I am one them. It was the summer of 2015 when I became a hardcore fan. I already had heard a few tracks from him prior to that, but when the first few Electronica singles were recommended to me on Youtube, I played them and I started to discover his older tracks, that’s how I discover his old classics too, like Oxygene and Equinoxe. Now, 10 years later, I can say that listening to Jarre defined my taste in music, influenced how I see art and technology, I was able to learn from him a lot and his music was with my in every situation of my life, with his diverse discography giving me different albums for all the different moods and life situations. This is why I’m so grateful that he was so active in the last 10 years, that I could experience him releasing so many different types of projects in every year instead of just replaying the old albums.
And oh yes, he was very very active in the last decade. I’m sure this was unexpected and shocking for many fans, Jarre was in some way at the peak of his activity from age 66 to 76. He added many different achievements to his already great legacy. In the last decade, Jean-Michel Jarre wasn’t a 70s artist who still releases music. He was a 2010s artist and a 2020s artist. Even his two sequel albums relied on new, creative ways to reboot old ideas instead of just simply continuing the same ideas. His work in the last 10 years stands on its own. They are not late period releases by an old famous artist, they simply great, creative, innovative works, which „happened to be released” by an artist who already had a 4 decade long legacy prior to this.
To celebrate all the things he achieved in this new era of his music, here are his projects since this day 10 years ago:
The Electronica project was an amazingly creative way to celebrate electronic music itself, showing us the many different styles of electronic music, from trance to synthpop, from Detriot techno to trip hop, all the different decades with so many amazing collaborators, other legends and lesser known talents as well. These albums got him back to a U.K. Top 10 on the charts for the first time since the 80s! He even got nominated for a Grammy.
The Electronica Tour lasted for several years, he created so many unique versions, many of the songs ended up being classics. ’Stardust’ has its place among the most popular Jarre tracks ever. He played the guitar, the laser harp, so many new, innovative visual and musical ideas. He went to the Coachella Festival, he perfomed in the Dead Sea, collaborating with Kamila on a new verson of Miss Moon, he even went to Riyadh to play at the Green Concert!
He also released the final chapter of the Oxygene Trilogy, a rebooted, modern version of the same Oxygene spirit, finishing with Oxygene 20, the long scream into space. He did Equinoxe Infinity, which was built around the The Watchers, the creatures from the cover of the original Equinoxe, giving us The Opening, an other classic. His compilation album, Planet Jarre celebrated the 50th anniversary of his career, it included several special track, for example a demo track for Music for Supermarkets.
He also released several side projects in that time. The most significant has to be the revolutionary EON app, the app that creates new music for you indefinitely in ambient, minimal techno and other styles. He also released a demonstation album for that, ’Snapshots for Eon’. He also worked the Gorillaz album ’Humanz’, working on the production of 4 track, including ’We Got The Power’, a track he performed once with Gorillaz in 2017. He composed 3 Radiophonie radio jingle and background music compilation albums Radiophonie 9, 10 and 12 with several interesting ideas, he created a track for the Souris Calle project and he also did a soundtrack for the HSBC bank, with a long, Waiting for Cousteau-like atmospheric ambient track as its biggest highlight.
Then, in the 2020s, when Covid came, Jarre turned towards the world of Virtual Reality. His first VR concert was Alone Together, with 3 new tracks, Azimuth, Alone Together and Avatars. But his greatest succes in VR and probably his biggest global hit was his concert at the end of 2020: ’Welcome to The Other Side’. He broke a record again, the most watched VR concert of all time, as 75 million people watched the concert overall from many different platfroms, from TV to streaming. In 2021, Jarre was awarded Commander to the Legion of Honour by President Macron at the Elysée presidential palace in Paris. After the ceremony he performed at the same venue.
Not long after this concert, Jarre turned the other way again, focusing on a less commerical, more experimental project called Amazonia, a fully atmospheric ambient album with amazing sound design quality, 5.1 and binaural mixes. This was an other completely new, different project, something that we never heard from him prior to its release.
But his greatest achievement from this era in terms of innovation, sound design quality, experimentation and beind bold was his next studio album, a homage to Pierre Henry’s work: Oxymore. Oxymore was a shocking album to Jarre fans and casual electronic music fans alike. It was a musique concrete inspired dark, experimental techno project. Nobody expected him to create an album like this, something that sounds completely different from the stereotypes about him, his pop culture image of making Oxygene-style music. It’s hard to believe that a 74 year old man can do such an amazingly creative and innovative, revolutionary album. This album was probably his greatest critical success in the last 25 years, even sites which usually have cynical attitudes towards Jarre or even about electronic music as a whole finally gave his respect. The German FAZE magazine gave the album a 10/10 rating, stating that JMJ is still not over his innovative peak.
Jarre did a short indoor tour with this experimental material, adding an other track, Periaktos, he was humble enough to do concerts in front of small crowds even after all his success. H also created a VR city called Oxyville, a smokey, dark, Sin City like world to fit the insdustrial sound of the album. Then Jarre worked on a rework album with several talented musicians to rework some track from the album. Oxymoreworks featured legends like Brian Eno and Martin Gore, but also, lesser known talents like Adiescar Chase and French 79.
At the end of 2023, his next amazing project was a mixed, VR-Live concert from Versailles, reworking some of his old tracks like Industrial Revolution and playing tracks Falling Down for the first time live. In 2024, Jarre organised his first outdoor free concert in 13 years in Bratislava at the Starmus festival. He collaborated with Sir Brian May on the project. The concert was a huge success, 120 000 people attended and I was fortunately enough to see it from the front row. It was an amazing compilation of his career and he also introduced us to the multi-instrumentalist talent of Adiescar Chase. Even at this point of his career, he came up with totally new ideas, for example using a didgeridoo on the track Azimuth. He also had a concert in Francofolies last year, where he performed Les Mots Bleu with Zaho de Sagazan. He was also part of the Closing Ceremony of the Paralympics, again, millions of new people were introduced to his music and many older fans realised how active he still is.
I just want to thank him for all of these amazing projects in single decade. He is still going stong, he is not going to stop, he still looking into the future. Many things changed, his instruments can change, his hair and clothes change, the visuals of his concerts change, but Jean-Michel Jarre is till the amazingly creative artist we follow. This decade from the release of the ’Glory’ single was nothing but… glorious.
Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum
Off course, as I mentioned in that topic, I can totally understand why some people did not connect with it, it's not an "easy listen". But I actually think this album was kind of the "Zoolook of this era of Jarre". Zoolook was also divisive in the 80s, many people were happy when he released Rendez-Vous next, and I have a feeling that his new album in 2026 will more "commercial" than Oxymore was. And the truth is: I actually see more and more posts about people going back to Oxymore and liking it much more now than they did in 2022. Whatever the case it, I feel like it's an important album of the Silver Age, so it ended being a divisive, but memorable release.
