Emerging in the mid-'70's, Jean-Michel Jarre was part of wave of musicians that were incorporating synthesizers, tape loops and state-of-the-art effects systems into pop-leaning forms. Unlike his mentor Pierre Schaeffer and his peers in the avant-garde and academic communities, Jarre married sweet, hummable melodies and traditional European harmonies to star-gazing soundscapes, making electronics seem safe and inviting to the masses. To some, this was tantamount to treason; one of electronic music's first manifestos, written by Luigi Russolo in 1913, demanded composers “break at all costs from this restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.” For those not interested in modernist treatises and radical new forms, however, Jarre was the sound of the future.
Without doubt, Jarre was on the right side of history. In addition to album sales well into the millions, in 1979 he broke the world's record for concert attendance, bringing 1,000,000 people to Paris' Place de la Concorde (he went on to break that record three more times). Yet in many ways his influence pales in comparison to his sales; his sheen is futuristic but his music looks fondly to the past. Though titled Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise, Jarre's latest album is anything but an exploration of the genre's roots in the radical manipulations of raw sound and analogue circuitry. Rather, it's an overstuffed, overlong string of collaborations that smothers Jarre's nimble melodicism under heaving EDM production and spooks his guests into cliches of themselves, or worse.
And what a series of guests. The Pet Shop Boys, Yello, and Gary Numan are all here, as well as Cyndi Lauper, ambient pioneers the Orb and pop shapeshifters Primal Scream. In their heyday, each of these artists had an unmistakable sound signature (except perhaps Primal Scream, who made a career out of reinvention), yet on Electronica 2 they are bulldozed by Jarre's production. There are flashes of recognition, such as the gospel choir on Primal Scream collab “As One,” an obvious nod to “Come Together.” More often though, Jarre appears resolutely in the driver's seat. For the previous installation*, Electronica 1:The Time Machine*, he said he tailored each song as a demo with the specific collaborator in mind, to be fleshed out or rewritten together in the studio later. If that's true here, it's hard to tell.
Jarre's decades on stadium stages may have something to do with the broader-than-broad strokes employed throughout the album. His preference is for slow, bombastic tempos and questing, classically-leaning chord progressions, and he runs this formula into the ground. The arrangements, heavily layered and sound-designed, telegraph an up-to-the-minute sheen yet lack a timeless quality. Sadly the effect carries over to the singers' performances; Lauper attempts an Ellie Goulding impression on “Swipe to the Right.” Numan, once both campy and sleek, is a bogged-down wannabe pop messiah on “Here for You.” The Pet Shop Boys fare a little better on “Brick England”—they simply sound like a boring version of themselves. Yello are meanwhile unrecognizable on the aptly titled existential dirge “Why This, Why That and Why.”
Other collaborations promise to push Jarre a bit out of his comfort zone, yet you feel him fussing. The presence of Jeff Mills suggests that Jarre might be game for a descent into a techno wormhole. Though “The Architect” eventually speeds up to a danceable clip and features traces of the claustrophobic minimalism that Mills perfected in his younger years, it also foregrounds string flourishes worthy of a James Bond opening sequence. The structure, too, is a mess, scrolling through breakdowns, sequences and buildups that have little relation to each other.
Intriguingly, the brief presence of NSA whistleblower and non-musician Edward Snowden on “Exit” yields the liveliest results. Jarre described the track as “trying to illustrate the idea of this crazy quest for big data on one side and the manhunt for this one young guy by the CIA, NSA and FBI on the other,” and “Exit” could certainly soundtrack a frenetic chase scene. Mid-song, the music slows to a halt and Snowden gets on the mic: “Technology can actually increase privacy... Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say... And if you don't stand up for it, then who will?” Jarre grabs that last phrase and loops it as he builds to a rushing climax. It's grandiose, cheesy and sounds like any generic rave scene in a movie, but coming halfway through Electronica 2's slog, it's a high point.
Closing with a pair of solo expeditions, one strangely credited “with JMJ himself,” the lasting impression isn't of a journey to the heart of noise, but rather of a blustery loneliness. Jarre recorded his breakthrough 1976 album Oxygene in his kitchen on a rudimentary setup; now he's has assembled a collection of his "heroes" and been given access to the finest studios in the world and yet repeatedly fails to engage the imagination. One senses a massively missed opportunity, a chance for exploration blown by Jarre's insatiable need to make everything bigger, more impressive. Perhaps Yello caught a glimpse of this while working on their lyrics: “trying to dig out the man that I could be, and I was shouting loud to find there's little me. ”
