grumpyf1

I went to a rave last week. The music was supplied by a slightly mad French pensioner. Welcome to 40 years of Jean-Michel Jarre. If you were vaguely interested in avant-garde/ambient music, and had an ear for the relatively new-fangled synthesiser sound, you’ll have been impressed by JMJ’s Oxygene album, boldly announcing the Frenchman’s arrival into the big time, late in 1976. Spooky skull-in-a-peeling-planet-earth cover and all, this gently pulsing masterpiece set him off on a career involving numerous awards, spectacular and record-breakingly vast outdoor concerts in unusual places and more the 20 albums. The most recent of these, Electronica 1 & 2, saw him collaborate with an impressive who’s-who of current and veteran musicians, and his first visit to the Top 10 album chart in a quarter of a century. He’s not exactly been growing old gracefully, either. Some of these recent tracks are firmly in the techno/dance/rave category, with relentless beats and decidedly up-te...