Jean- Michel Edward Snowden presence on video. He’ s not a singer, not a rock artist, but he’ s a
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considered an album with some different parts. And to really start it, you have to have some chaotic moments that are a nod to that darkness, chaotic moments that are typical of what we were living through. I mean, you can go out and you can be killed on a street corner by terrorists. But you can also potentially meet the love of your life, and these instances are extremely negative or extremely positive moments in life that you just cannot control. And even through the Internet, you can find somebody that could become the love of |
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massive fan of electronic music, so he was very excited about this collaboration, and together we conceived this mad, crazy techno track. I just recorded Edward’ s voice, talking and revealing why he did what he did. So it’ s a great moment in the concert, when you suddenly have this huge image of Snowden talking to the crowd. But in every electronic movement, there’ s a hedonistic side, where you listen to music for pleasure and dance until the end of the night. But because electronic music is close to technology, close to the Internet, it can question the dark side of technology and also what’ s going on around it. And I realized that when I did Oxygene 3 – all of these terrible terrorist attacks were happening in France, so I |
05 • 2017 your life. But technology allows us to go faster and faster, and to also create chaos from nothing. So I had lots of ideas I wanted to put in this album, and I think the record has two sides. Since I did the first Oxygene in vinyl days, I was thinking about Side One and Side Two. So Side One is probably more dark, because of these awful terrorist attacks occurring in France, and I was really affected by that. And I tracked the first side precisely at that moment. But then Side Two is more sunny, melodic and brighter. So the light and dark elements make it kind of a different album.
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Jean-Michael Jarre, circa 1975 |
IE: And you just worked with Gorillaz for its new album“ Humanz”? JMJ: It’ s really strange, this prospect of collaboration |
. I started collaborating for my Electronica projects, and then I started getting requests for collaborations on other projects. And a few months ago, I met( Gorillaz / Blur bandleader) Damon Albarn, and we thought it would be great to do something together. So he joined me in my studio in Paris, and we spent some sessions together for what would become three new Gorillaz tracks. And I must say that I took a lot of pleasure in working with Damon – he’ s one of the most versatile and richly creative people I’ ve ever met. And he works in an interesting way – it’ s a mixture of instinct and an almost perfectionist attitude. And we both believe that the most interesting thing, creatively, is when you’ re losing control and the accidents |
that then happen. And we are both recording everything we do. For instance, you’ re in a session for three hours, you record everything, and you just play – it’ s total freedom. And obviously, maybe 90 % of the time, you do that and it’ s just not very interesting. But other times? You get something that’ s really unique. And this process reminds me of what jazz is all about. So electronic music and jazz are quite close, I think.
IE: Thanks to your bohemian mom, you saw jazz icons like Chet Baker when you were a little kid. JMJ: Yeah. I was so lucky. My mom was close friends with this woman who had
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