OXYMORE

Five years after the passing of Pierre Henry, his mentor and teacher during his tenure with the Groupe de Recherche Musical, Jarre is dedicating now his twenty-second studio album to pay homage to this man (certainly one fundamental pioneer in the development of the electroacustic approach to avant-garde music in the 20th Century), and this is done by a renovated resort to a lot of musique concrète (the brainchild of Henry) elements.

The resulting trip not only transcends the vast sphere of the electronica we got accustomed to expect from Jarre over the years, but also tread a new path, mixing purely electronic with electro-acoustic materials, such as modulated voices, and all sorts of real-world physical noises heavily treated with electronic effects (including reverb) and organically integrated in the seemingly endless flow and loop of beats, sequences and mutating rythm patterns, in order to produce a crepitating, palpitating cosmos, successively constructed and then frayed at its seams.

But there is more than just rythms and effects here: there is an acute sense of harmony and melodic design taking place as a whole that evolves and grows (helped by "natural" processed sounds of breathe, air, water, etc) into some kind of immensely heavy dome and archs, the sonic analogs to the ones in the album cover picture. That demented architecture (probably our world's own) is immense and infinitely claustrophobic at the same time, in symmetric opposition to the cover picture of Jarre's debut Oxygène, where the world appears scorched and peeled, but still open to space.

If you wish to put on your EVA suit and go out there, you may enjoy the trip, as I did.