Review: Jean-Michel Jarre - Planet Jarre

Do we need another Jean-Michel Jarre compilation?  The new multiple-disc selection Planet Jarre looks back on his 50 year music career, with something new, something old and a few rarities as well.

The collection is assembled in four themed sections: Soundscapes, Themes, Sequences and Explorations and Early Works, and Jarre's done a little bit of work remixing and tweaking the tracks for 21st century ears.

Soundscapes collects his more ambient works, with the first part of Oxygene opening the set. It showcases Jarre's breakthrough works, but with the focus on the less commercial tracks and works well.

There's a flavour of the more experimental edge of 70s prog rock running through this work. While he's credited as a major commercial artist, this selection - which covers material up to his 2016 Heart of Noise album - gives us the opportunity to re-assess his work in the context of a more artistic framework.

The second selection - Themes - contains some of his best-known work, with Oxygene 4 and Equinoxe 5 as well as Magnetic Fields 2 and laser harp number Rendez-Vous 2. You'll probably recognise them all, if there's a 'greatest hits' playlist in this collection, this is it.

 I'm not so keen on the tracks Zoolookologie and Bells, and while they've got their place in his body of work, to these ears the 80s synths have dated worse than much of his early work.

Sequences shows his work in a far more contemporary style of electronics. The new track Coachella Opening takes us right up to 2018, and others in this section such as Equinoxe 7 and 1982's Arpeggiator show that Jarre is no stranger to operating in the more dance oriented electronic area. I've always thought that given the right set, Jarre could blow the roof off an Ibiza mega club. Stardust, featuring Armen Van Buuren makes this case strongly.

The final selection Explorations and Early Works gathers some of his lesser known material, including early singles and pre-Oxygene soundtrack works. His debut single La Cage and Erosmachine as well as Hypnose and 1968's Happiness is a sad song all deserve to be on display again, as does the demo excerpt from his legendary Music for Supermarkets single-copy album.

Some may have preferred other rare material to appear, some of the tracks here featured on 2011's Essentials and Rarities collection, but that collection is itself now difficult to locate. This presents them in the way they deserve, held up alongside his most popular and artistically acclaimed work.
There's maybe yet a place for his early Deserted Palace album, early pseudonym singles and for the Dustbins to get their moment in the sun.

Throughout his career Jarre has done more than most to make electronic music popular and accessible, without it being artistically weak. From copies of Oxygene given away free with newspapers to his massive outdoor shows, he's always reached out to those who might give him a listen. Most have come away impressed. There's a generation who are now discovering his work through the current electronic artists, and this collection shows Jarre has been leading from the front for decades, and shows little sign of resting on past glories.

To answer the question in the first paragraph: Do we need another Jean-Michek Jarre compilation? Yes, actually we probably do.