ELECTRONICA 2 - THE HEART OF NOISE

From YELLO, Gary Numan, The Orb and Edward Snowden to Cyndi Lauper, Peaches, The Pet Shop Boys and other more contemporary guests like Primal Scream, it is hard not to feel entertained.

Jean Michel Jarre delivers some solo pieces and for the second time invites important or remarkable electronic related colleagues and names this release "Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise", 2016, the sequel to his "Electronica 1: The Time Machine", 2015.

I assume the best way to review this release is as a Various Artists album. For starters, before getting tangled in such a concept, J.M. Jarre, opposite to what one will suspect as his lengthy SOLO discography might suggest, is a perfect team player! ! He can blend as fire to fire to any of his guests' style, no matter if he has never played on those fields and yet imprinting his signature music language in the mix.

Now as the V.A. focus demands, if you do not enjoy, for example The Pet Shop Boys (as myself), well you are not going to get your kicks for starters, unless you accept the V.A. tagging and then maybe you might be in for some surprises. I myself felt happy with the inclusion of YELLO, and extra delighted with their collaboration, but not that amazed with the extraordinary Gary Numan's one (it lacks his usual gloomy "punch') and extremely surprised with the unknown to my ears Jeff Mills', Peaches' or Cristophe's songs and so on.

I also own his first ELECTRONICA and a similar thing happened with it (disappointed with the Tangerine Dream and Pete Townshend collaborations but amazed with the Laurie Anderson's or Massive Attack's one and so on..), therefore in able to truly enjoy both releases you have to accept the idea of listening to some stuff you would usually avoid by rule.

This release is entertaining. Some great stuff (as a couple of his solo pieces included), some perfectly performed, out of my taste, ones and another few of forgettable ones.

I would have preferred to give a single 4 stars rating to both albums if they were one, but separately each deserves ***3 PA stars, on the rise!