Jean-Michel Jarre... his astounding first album in 1972

[himalaya]

JM Jarre's premium output/holy trinity (Oxygene, Equinoxe, Les Chants Magnetiques)

Nicely put, and it's how I feel too, although Zoolook is the album that wants to make it a quadrinity in my JMJ pantheon.

[BlackWinny]

What synthesizers did he use on his first 1972 album? I see 2 EMS synthi's on the screenshot, but did he use any others too, like those big modulars at that time? What is the black box in front of him on the picture?

All the album was made with nothing else that:

• an ARP 2600 that he had just bought and was experimenting (and that he keeps on using today)
• an EMS VCS 3 Putney (the same he uses yet today, he has always said that this Putney is his fetiche and his "porte-bonheur").
• an EMS Synthi AKS bought also recently, it was his first use of it.
• A Farfisa organ

Nothing else.


He used the same material to record (the same year) the soundtrack of the french movie "Les Granges Brûlées" (which was outed a few months later in May 1973).

Basically almost all of the Jarre trademarks are already there - the melodic vein, the naïve simplicity (strange from someone who came from the experimental avant-garde of Paris), and the pop beats. Only things missing are the Eminent String Machine and the Mellotron.

BTW: My first Jarre records was a double LP Oxygene/Equinoxe, bought a couple of years before he launched Chants Magnetiques (which, BTW, up to today I don't know wht were changed into Magnetic Fields in the english title, when the correct title would be Magnetic Chants).

"Chant magnétique" was a pun on "champ magnétique" both being pronounced exactly the same, but it was impossible to render in English, an English speaking person having any knowledge of the French language would have not understood. After quite a few reflections and attempts to find approaching puns in English, nothing really enthralling was coming, and the day of the release outside France was very close, so the Music Executive (Francis Dreyfus himself) decided to abandon the idea of an English pun and stated on the common term "Magnetic Fields".

[fmr]

BTW: My first Jarre records was a double LP Oxygene/Equinoxe, bought a couple of years before he launched Chants Magnetiques (which, BTW, up to today I don't know wht were changed into Magnetic Fields in the english title, when the correct title would be Magnetic Chants).

"Chant magnétique" was a pun on "champ magnétique" both being pronounced exactly the same, but it was impossible to render in English, an English speaking person having any knowledge of the French language would have not understood. After quite a few reflections and attempts to find approaching puns in English, nothing really enthralling was coming, and the day of the release outside France was very close, so the Music Executive (Francis Dreyfus himself) decided to abandon the idea of an English pun and stated on the common term "Magnetic Fields".

They could come out with the french title alone. Jarre was already quite famous at the time (although not so much as he would become after the China tour). The way it came out, looks like a fail to me (and yes, I noticed the pun)

[BlackWinny]

And in fact at the origin the title of the album "Les Champs Magnétiques" had nothing to do with the physics but with the novel written in 1919 by two grands writers and poets André Breton and Philippe Soupault. The title of the novel was "Les champs magnétiques", and it was translated in many languages, among them in English with the title "The Magnetic Fields" which is the exact translation of the French title. While both poets, this novel was written in prose, not in verses, and using a "method" of writing called "automatic writing" which consists in letting the hand write alone with the mind simply roaming (it gives sometimes very good results in poetry). This book was the first literary work which launched the Surrealist Movement in 1919. Like many lovers of the French poetry (and I am among them) Jean-Michel Jarre adores the oeuvres written by the grand poet André Breton. And also the album has been thought a bit in that mind: a sort of "automatic writing" of the scores at first drafts. So for him it was natural to title his album "Les Champs Magnétiques" in reference to the two authors and the birth of the Surrealist Movement. But he wanted to add a pun in the title of the album, the term "Chants" in the place of "Champs" was of course tantalizing... but it had been impossible to render in English. So after many attempts in vain to find something good the Music Executive decided to keep the English version of the title of the novel, simply "The Magnetic Fields". The pun disappeared but the reference to André Breton and the birth of the Surrealist Movement remained.

[crimsonwarlock]

Nicely put, and it's how I feel too, although Zoolook is the album that wants to make it a quadrinity in my JMJ pantheon.

I hated Zoolook when it came out, but it has grown on me over the years and now I think it is maybe his best album.