JEAN-MICHEL JARRE: Electronica 1- The Time Machine (2015)

“Electronica 1- The Time Machine is indeed a good comeback to roots and the best Jarre album in the field since Chronologie”

1 The Time Machine (Boys Noize) 3:52 2 Glory (M83) 3:56 3 Close Your Eyes (Air) 6:23 4 Automatic. Pt. 1 (Vince Clarke) 3:09 5 Automatic. Pt. 2 (Vince Clarke) 2:58 6 If..! (Little Boots) 2:57 7 Immortals (Fuck Buttons) 4:30 8 Suns Have Gone (Moby) 5:46 9 Conquistador (Gesaffelstein) 3:06 10 Travelator, Pt. 2 (Pete Townshend) 3:06 11 Zero Gravity (Tangerine Dream) 6:46 12 Rely on Me (Laurie Anderson) 2:56

13 Stardust (Armin van Buuren) 4:38 14 Watching You (3D's Massive Attack) 4:05 15 A Question of Blood (John Carpenter) 3:00 16 The Train & The River (Lang Lang) 7:13 Columbia ‎| 88875123472

(CD/DDL 69:25) (V.F.)

(Electronica)

There is some excitement in the air. The air of the social networks! From the start, I didn't want to write a review about Jean Michel Jarre's last album. The one who was a big magician of sounds and of colors of tones in the 70s has fell asleep, little by little, as the new millennium directed the art to make EM easily without, or with a little, a knowledge of its roots. Metamorphoses, Sessions 2000, Geometry of Love and Teo and Tea are all adventures that have divided his fans into three clans: the pre Zoolook era, the one of Rendez-Vous to Oxygen 7-13 and finally the period of Odyssey Through O2 to Teo and Tea. But my readers insisted and one of them even send me a promo (thanks Carl) in order to talk, to write about it. So here I am! We heard of this ELECTRONICA - The Time Machine by means of a powerful commercial machine which has crumbled little by little the secrets of the album on the social networks, scattering the big names that would be part of the project, as well as promotional videos. The craze got the upper hand over the curiosity when the name of Tangerine Dream, there is a whole parallel to be drawn here between both careers, fed the conversations of the Internet users which salivated at the idea of this unexpected, to say the least, collaboration. From what I heard and read over the Net, the basic idea behind the album is to make an overview on EM, ages and styles, through a crowd of artists who were invited to complete the bases of Jean-Michel Jarre's music. It's a little bit like turning old into new! I found that very conceited. Like if Jarre proclaimed himself to be the Lord of an empire of which he is a pioneer among so many others. An important builder certainly, but a pioneer!

And then the singles came. Glory, Conquistador and Zero Gravity. A rough draft of cold settles down. Heavy with a big envelope of down-tempo which turns into a mixture of dance and trance, Glory and its voices of synth-pop is hardly convincing. That rocks and it's a cheap Electronica, as it occurs to be a lot since the beginning of the 90's. Conquistador is more convincing and awakes the forgotten skeletons of Zoolook while Zero Gravity and its horde of sequences which parade at a brisk pace in synth lamentations perfumed of Chronologie along other synth pads and riffs with fragrances of Hyperborea, we talk of Tang