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Feature    Jean Michel Jarre  Les Rythmes Digitales Video Interview - April 20, 2000
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JEAN MICHEL JARRE is, quite simply, a pioneer. The guy has been twiddling synthesiser controls since before most of todays techno-stars were born. Basically, before Jarre (son of famous film composer Maurice, fact fans) came along, electronic music was simply not listened to. Tunes that featured bleeps were for weirdos.

Then came along 'Oxygene', Jarre's 1977 debut album, a record full of nothing but electronic textures and sounds making big pop tunes. It sold and sold and sold some more... and Jean Michel Jarre became electronic musics first megastar, playing enormous, stadium-dwarfing concerts in Paris, Houston and China, selling over 50 million records along the way and influencing a whole new creative generation to pick up their synthesisers and grow up to be the house, techno and electronica musicians of 2000.

Now, Jarre has come full circle, taking inspiration from these artists, people like air, Underworld, The Chemical Brothers and Les Rythmes Digitales and exploring the worlds of trance, house and trip-hop on his Metamorphoses.

One of those influenced by Jarre was LES RYTHMES DIGITALES. Originally a resident of Reading, JACQUES LU CONT (as he claims he is called) got himself signed to the legendary Wall Of Sound label and proceeded to make Darkdancer, an album of digital watch-wearing, electro-bopping, airbrushed, warts and all '80s-style synthpop.

The record had such an impact that Les Rythmes Digitales was recently asked to perform at one of the designer Versaces parties. None of it would have happened, Jacques maintains, had he not started listening to Jean Michel Jarre as a child.

Until Music365 brought them together, Jean Michel Jarre and Jacques Lu Cont had actually never met....


VIDEO: 'Bonjour!' from Jean Michel and Jacques; select optimum connection: 28K, 56K, 300K

Music365: Jean Michel meet Jacques, Jacques meet Jean Michel....
VIDEO: Select optimum connection: 28K, 56K, 300K
Jarre: Good to see you.
Jacques: Nice to meet you. Im a big fan.
Jarre: We are sharing the same taxi in Paris.
Jacques: Ah, Joe. Do you know him? I didnt know whether to believe him or not and then he came back with this pile of [your] minidiscs.
Jarre: He did the same with yours.

The same taxi driver? Called Joe?
Jaqcues: Theres this taxi driver in Paris...
Jarre: ...Called Joe Le Taxi. You remember the song? His name is Joe, he owns a taxi and its nothing to do with the song.
Jacques: Actually, he told me it was to do with the song.
Jarre: Its nothing to do with the song but maybe hes right, that the guy who wrote the lyrics might have done it because of him. Anyway, we are sharing the same guy so obviously it creates links and Im a big fan of
your [Jacques] work.

Jean Michel, what was the first time you heard Les Rythmes Digitales?
VIDEO: Select optimum connection: 28K, 56K, 300K
Jean: What you have to understand is this is
my tribe. Even if I like rock'n'roll or jazz or classical music, the main music Im listening to is really electronic music. I felt quite lonely in the '80s because it was the punk and grunge period and even if I liked it, and I did enjoy some of those acts, it was far away from my world. Then suddenly in the '90s the whole electronic scene exploded. People like Jacques really influenced me and gave me the energy to develop on my own way.

Jacques: I remember listening to your 'Zoolook' (1984) album, it was then I knew I had to get a sampler because I wanted to use sounds that you cannot use in any other sense as an instrument. How else can you use a voice as an
instrument? I like how you say you got the energy from the '90s. Its funny because you know that energy was really passed to me by people. Its a sharing thing, and hopefully it will go backwards and forwards between us until we are both hundreds of years old.

Jean Michel, why did you start composing and recording electronic music?
VIDEO: Select optimum connection: 28K, 56K, 300K
It was the first time I discovered that music was not about notes but about sounds. I have always been convinced that one day [electronic music] would become a style and a genre in itself. Its not a movement, electronic music is not just a scene. Its a different way of thinking the music, enjoying music and receiving music. Its being like a cook. I think that our job is very close to cooking and doing pasta and mixing ingredients and mixing frequencies. A DJ on his turntables is like being in front of an oven cooking frequencies in a very organic-type sensual way; I think electronic music is by far more sensual than classical music for example.

In a sense [electronic music]s much more biological than rock. I love rock'n'roll but its about plugging yourself with electricity in your tummy. Electronic sound is something else. It is like dealing with your own organs from inside. What I always enjoyed with electronic sounds is like if you were to hear the sound through the skin of your brain or the skin of your heart.

'Metamorphoses', your new album, is different to anything else you've done, not least because it features vocals. Why the change?
VIDEO: Select optimum connection: 28K, 56K, 300K
I revisited the past with my last album, the sequel of 'Oxygene'. I was not too happy with it, actually, I think it was maybe a mistake. I was too faithful to the original. I decided to move into something else, be more
personal, try to express things in a more intimate way. As soon as you are using words, even if you are putting just one word in a track, then you are conveying something, you are less impressionistic, you are not only doing soundscapes but trying to deal with feelings.

Jean, is it true that some of the new album was inspired by the film-maker Pedro Almodovar?
Yes. The idea of Metamorphoses was for me linked with people carrying the idea in their flesh and trans-sexuals are the human beings carrying metamorphoses in their flesh on a day to day basis. I was really impressed by All About My Mother, this movie describing the life of a
trans-sexual as a normal human being, which obviously we all are, and I really wanted to convey this by using a symphonic orchestra but transforming it electronically and using my own vocal and making it like a female voice
or operatic voice, metamorphosing the sounds themselves.

Jean Michel, you've said you are interested in club culture. Have you ever tried DJing yourself?
Jean Michel: Yes, and I would like to this more but Im better at mixing CDs rather than vinyl because I think especially these days with big PA systems you have the problem of rumble with the turntables and I must say I like the digital approach of mixing.
Jacques: It may not be cool to mix with CDs but I think that with vinyl its an aesthetic. Vinyl is a very sexy thing to bring out of its sleeve and show the girls maybe and put it down and put the headphones on. Thats the
show part of it.
Jean Michel: "But were being sexy by ourselves. We dont need the records.

Jean Michel, tell us about the huge gig you played at the pyramids in Egypt for the Millennium?
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Jean: Very exotic.
Jacques: I tried to come.
Jean: Its really sad; you could have joined us on stage.
Jacques: Dont tell me that now!
Jean: Next Millennium, if we are preserved in ice cubes, we really should think about that. Egypt was something really very special. I think the concert at the pyramids I the one I enjoyed the most and yes I am most proud of. When I went to Egypt three years ago I was on my own in front of the Pyramids. There were no tourists there, just because of one terrorist act. I mean you have had less terrorist acts in Egypt in the past ten years than you have had in London or Paris. Celebrating the Millennium doesnt mean anything except that we are all hoping as individuals for a better world, better understanding, better tolerance and if there is one place to celebrate those ideas it is in the Middle East and especially in Egypt. To have 20,000 Egyptians enjoying themselves in the desert in a kind of
Egyptian Woodstock way is something great.
VIDEO: Select optimum connection: 28K, 56K, 300K

How do you intend to follow that?
Jean Michel: I really would like to have more intimate venues for this next tour and do some festivals, Glastonbury or Tribal Gathering, those kind of things. And then on the Moon, with him [Jacques]. Now we just have to find a way of staying up there.
Jacques: Maybe youre making a joke but thats a perfect example of the way you think ahead... a long way ahead.

Interview: ROBERT HELLER
Video & Images: KIERON FLYNN

Thu Apr 20 2000 18:28 GMT

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