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Jean Michel Jarre: Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia Records
Released: 2016.05.06
Time:
 74:14
Category: Electronica
Producer(s): Jean Michel Jarre
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: jeanmicheljarre.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2016
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] The Heart of Noise, Pt. 1 [with Rone] (Jarre, Erwan Castex) - 4:26
[2] The Heart of Noise, Pt. 2 (Jarre) - 4:10
[3] Brick England [with Pet Shop Boys] (Jarre, Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe) - 4:01
[4] These Creatures [with Julia Holter] (Jarre, Julia Holter) - 3:40
[5] As One [with Primal Scream] (Jarre, Andrew Innes, Bobby Gillespie, Robert Young) - 3:58
[6] Here For You [with Gary Numan] (Jarre, Gary Numan) - 3:59 *
[7] Electrees [with Hans Zimmer] (Jarre, Hans Zimmer) - 4:10
[8] Exit [with Edward Snowden] (Jarre) - 6:19
[9] What You Want [with Peaches] (Jarre, Merrill Nisker) - 3:27
[10] Gisele [with Sebastien Tellier] (Jarre, Sebastien Tellier) - 3:43
[11] Switch on Leon [with The Orb] (Jarre, Alex Paterson, Thomas Fehlmann) - 4:43
[12] Circus [with Siriusmo] (Jarre, Moritz Friedrich) - 3:09
[13] Why This, Why That and Why [with Yello] (Jarre, Dieter Meier, Boris Blank) - 3:58
[14] The Architect [with Jeff Mills] (Jarre, Jeff Mills) - 4:43
[15] Swipe to the Right [with Cyndi Lauper] (Jarre, Cyndi Lauper, Carmen Cacciatore) - 4:54
[16] Walking the Mile [with Christophe] (Jarre, Daniel Bevilacqua) - 4:52
[17] Falling Down (Jarre) - 3:23
[18] The Heart of Noise (The Origin) (Jarre) - 2:39
 
* - contains samples from "Come Together" by Primal Scream

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Jean-Michel Jarre - Keyboards, Electronics, Producer, Mixing
 
Claude Samard - Co-producer
Joachim Garraud - Co-producer, Additional Mixing
Marco Grenier - Co-producer
Stephane Gervais - Co-producer
David Dadwater - Mastering
Eric BDFCK Cornic - Graphics, Design
Liner Notes – Phil Alexander
Fiona Commins - Management
Louis Hallonet - Management
Edith Napias - Administration
Alan Lander - Legal Advisor
Maximilien Jazani - Legal Advisor
Angel Ceballo - Photography
Daria Marchik - Photography
Flavien Priorat - Photography
Jacob Khrist - Photography
Jan Riephoff - Photography
Lucie Bevilacqua - Photography
Moritz Friedrich - Photography
Stéphane Manel - Photography
Zoe Zimmer - Photography
Patrick Pelamourgues - Technical Assistance

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2016 CD Columbia/RCA 3301308
 
 
Jean-Michel Jarre's two-part Electronica series finds the French synthesizer guru in full-on Santana circa Supernatural mode, collaborating with a vast array of guest musicians ranging from veterans to younger artists. The second volume, released seven months after 2015's inaugural The Time Machine, is titled The Heart of Noise in reference to Italian futurist Luigi Russolo's 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises. Jarre has a keen ear for collaborators, ranging from his '80s synth pop peers to 21st century techno artists whose work carries on the legacy of his past innovations. As to be expected from such an extensive laundry list of guests, however, the end result is wildly inconsistent, and taken song by song, it's very much a hit-or-miss affair. A lot of the pairings make total sense on paper, and in many cases they don't necessarily do anything wrong, they just aren't particularly exciting. "Here for You" sounds exactly like what a Jarre/Gary Numan team-up should sound like, with a cruising midtempo synth pop rhythm and an unmistakably Numan-esque melody, but the tune itself doesn't end up being memorable. Similarly, "Brick England" is a typically anthemic Pet Shop Boys song, and Cyndi Lauper's Tinder-inspired "Swipe to the Right" is perky, neon dance-pop that sounds closer to Robyn than her own work. Again, neither are bad; they're just not notable. The most successful tracks are the ones that reflect Jarre's visionary spirit, as well as that of his cohorts. The Orb (who previously remixed Jarre's iconic "Oxygène" into their excellent 1997 single "Toxygene") mixes spoken samples from synthesizer inventors Léon Theremin and Bob Moog, as well as Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, into a dense yet fluid collage, which is topped by the eerie sounds of the Theremin itself. Julia Holter makes a surprise appearance, adding her ethereal vocals to the shimmering synths of "These Creatures." Of the album's dancefloor-friendly tracks, the highlight is easily "Circus" (with Siriusmo), a playful, romantic take on choppy French house. Far less successful is Jarre's sappy, filter-heavy reworking of Primal Scream's "Come Together" (retitled "As One"), which is so cheesy it's hard to imagine why he even bothered creating it. The album's oddest cut is "Exit," which begins as an aggressive psy-trance track before slowing down to present a chopped-up monologue from exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden that pertains to privacy and freedom of speech. "The Heart of Noise" bookends the album, with its first part (a cinematic version featuring Rone) and more dissonant second part kicking it off, and the original demo concluding the release. As with the first volume of Electronica, the second is commendable for its scope and its attempt to bridge several generations of electronic music, but as a listening experience, it requires a fair amount of cherry-picking.
 
Paul Simpson - All Music Guide
 
 
 
Last year’s album of collaborations with the great and good of electronic music saw Jean-Michel Jarre pair up with Air, Vince Clark, Tangerine Dream and Moby. On this companion piece he teams up with the likes of Jeff Mills, the Orb, Yello and Sebastien Tellier, and again seems energised and inspired by the collaborative process. Brick England is dourly tuneful Pet Shop Boys, Peaches is sneeringly assertive on What You Want, and Here For You, featuring Gary Numan, has a real whiff of synthpop circa 1980 – but all are afloat on flowing patterns that bear the unmistakable stamp of Jarre. These Creatures, featuring Julia Holter, has an echo of Laurie Anderson’s O Superman in its “ah ah ah” backing. But the real curveball comes on the album’s centrepiece, Exit, on which Edward Snowden discusses the importance of privacy in a digital world (“If you don’t stand up for it, then who will?”) against a dizzying techno backdrop.
 
Jon Dennis - Thursday 5 May 2016
© 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited
 
 
 
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.”
 
Daniel Martin-McCormick - May 12 2016
Pitchfork.com
 
 
 
Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise is the eighteenth studio album of French electronic musician and composer Jean Michel Jarre, released on 6 May 2016 by Columbia Records. It is the second of a two-part album (the first being Electronica 1: The Time Machine) that is based around collaborations with other electronic musicians from a wide range of decades and styles.
 
Electronica 1 included artists such as Vince Clarke, Gesaffelstein, M83, Armin van Buuren, John Carpenter, 3D (of Massive Attack), Pete Townshend, Tangerine Dream, and others, while Electronica 2 includes collaborations with Pet Shop Boys, Rone, Julia Holter, Primal Scream, Gary Numan, Hans Zimmer, Edward Snowden, Peaches, Sébastien Tellier, The Orb, Siriusmo, Yello, Jeff Mills, Cyndi Lauper and Christophe. In all, the two-album collaboration has some 30 collaborators, and Jarre has described it as his "most ambitious project."
 
The name of the album, its album art as well as its full track and collaboration listings were revealed to the public on 19 February 2016.
 
Wikipedia.org
 
 
 
Last year’s Electronica 1: The Time Machine, re-established the now-67-year-old Jean-Michel Jarre as a pioneer of commercial electro and maintained his status as a boundary-pusher.
 
Recorded simultaneously and every bit its predecessor’s equal, Electronica 2: The Heart Of Noise once again finds Jarre collaborating with devotees from Pet Shop Boys and Gary Numan to Peaches and Julia Holter, via Primal Scream mashing up Come Together on As One and Yello doing a stellar turn on Why This, Why That & Why?.
 
Most intriguing is whistleblower Edward Snowden’s spoken cameo on the hyperactive Exit, but for all the guests, Jarre is master of his own house and his grandstanding, windswept keyboards bind everything and everyone together.
 
John Aizlewood - Friday 6 May 2016
Evening Standard
 
 
 
Nachdem Elektronik-Pionier Jean-Michel Jarre bereits im Oktober mit "Electronica 1 - The Time Machine", den ersten Teil seines Kollaborations-Projekts veröffentlichte, legt er nun ordentlich nach. Auch wenn die beiden Alben über ihre Untertitel thematische Differenzen vorgeben ("The Time Machine" vs. "The Heart Of Noise"), verfolgt Jarre hier kein distinktives Konzept. Teil Zwei macht genau da weiter, wo der Vorgänger aufgehört hat.
 
Die Gästeliste hat es wieder in sich. Diesmal traf sich der Musiker unter anderem mit Julia Holter, Pet Shop Boys, Gary Numan, Peaches, Hans Zimmer, Primal Scream und Cyndi Lauper zur gemeinsamen Studioarbeit.
 
Und mit Edward Snowden. Der erhielt zwar keinen Gesangs-, sondern einen Spoken-Word-Part, gehört aber dennoch zu den (vom Personal her gesehen) spektakulärsten Features. Auch wenn der Song an sich nicht außergewöhnlich daherkommt. Zu einem hektischen, leicht paranoiden Techno-Track handelt Snowden das Thema Privatsphäre ab. Dafür besuchte Jarre ihn nach Vermittlung des britischen Guardian extra in Moskau.
 
Den Anfang macht der Franzose gemeinsam mit Rone. Wabernde Synths, glasklare Arpeggios, pulsierend-zirpende Bässe. "The Heart Of Noise Pt. 1" heißt der Track und funktioniert als Overtüre zur Fortsetzung prächtig. Der zweite Teil des Stücks lässt nicht lange auf sich warten: Jarre möchte seinen Signature-Sound in die Jetztzeit holen, das hört man den Stücken aus allen Poren an. Hier gelingt das nur bedingt, "The Heart Of Noise Pt. 2" klingt trotz High-Definition-Hektik wahlweise anachronistisch, altbacken oder autoreferenziell.
 
Dann geht es Schlag auf Schlag. "Brick England" mit den Pet Shop Boys klingt herrlich nach den Pet Shop Boys in traurig und ist eines der besten Stücke beider Alben. Auch die Zusammenarbeit in "These Creatures" mit Julia Holter geht als Volltreffer durch: Jarre gelingt das Kunststück, seinen Gästen einerseits genug Raum zu lassen, andererseits unverkennbar nach ihm selbst zu klingen.
 
Auf den ersten Blick recht ungewöhnliche Gäste sind Primal Scream, der gemeinsame Track "As One" lebt von Arpeggios, hochgepitchten Stimmen, mit denen auch Blümchen oder Scooter eine Freude gehabt hätten und jeder Menge Vocoder. Gemeinsam mit seinem Kumpel Gary Numan lässt er anschließend auf "Here For You" die 80er Jahre ordentlich aufleben. Launiger Electro auch in "What You Want" mit Peaches, wieder ein geglücktes Unterfangen von zwei ebenbürtigen Partnern. Bei "Electrees" mit Hans Zimmer wird der Arpeggiator wieder auf Zwölf gedreht, dazu gesellen sich - was auch sonst - cineastische Streichersphären.
 
"Circus", Jarres Kollaboration mit Siriusmo kommt als gut gelaunte French-House-Nummer daher. Ebenso stark ist die Zusammenarbeit mit Cyndi Lauper: "Swipe To The Right" beschäftigt sich wieder einmal mit dem Thema Kommunikation durch neue Medien.
 
Dass Jean-Michel Jarre das Rad der elektronischen Musik neu erfinden würde, war natürlich keine Prämisse des Projekts. Viel mehr zelebriert er mit beiden Alben jenen Sound, den er ja gehörig mitprägte, in vielerlei Facetten - und hat durchaus Spaß am Retrofuturismus.
 
Markus Brandstetter - Laut.de-Kritik
 

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