French Electronic Music: the Soundscapes in Sequence of Jean-Michel Jarre
Jarre Turned Tape Loops, Analog Synths, and Monumental Performances into a Global Revolution in Music
Jean-Michel Jarre, born in Lyon, France in 1948, is considered the father of mainstream electronic music, taking fringe genre mainstream. His groundbreaking 1976 album Oxygène introduced lush, immersive soundscapes built with early analog synthesizers like the ARP 2600 and EMS VCS 3, setting a new standard for electronic music. Oxygène Part IV, the album’s standout track, featured a hypnotic melody, layered textures, and an otherworldly atmosphere not being created by many other artists of the time.
It’s sometimes hard to imagine the importance of something after the change has happened, but purely electronic music wasn’t as popular then as it is now, even for now-iconic performers like Brian Eno and Kraftwerk.
Before Jarre’s 1976 breakthrough Oxygène, Jarre has put together a few example exercises and a 1972 album of soundtracks, largely influenced by his time at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), a pioneering institution founded in 1958 by Pierre Schaeffer (the French Ministry of Culture says 1951), one of the world’s first centers for experimental electronic sound and musique concrète.
Jarre’s sound was melodic, dramatic, futuristic - even catchy. It was a departure from other sounds of the time. That said, I’m not a huge fan - it’s a bit too New Age for my tastes, but Jarre’s innovations transformed music and live performances.
His stuff is intensely complicated.
Oxygène(s)
Oxygène (the album) features 6 tracks, titled Oxygène Part I, Oxygène Part II, Oxygène Part III, Oxygène Part IV, Oxygène Part V and Oxygène Part VI, each flowing seamlessly into the next to create an immersive and atmospheric listening experience. Oxygène Part IV is the iconic track from that album.
Recorded in a makeshift home studio, the album was released without any real publicity, but it sold over 15 million copies. While other artists were working with purely electronic sounds, no one had his level of popularity.
This 1979 interview and performance is a beautiful display of vintage electronics - and Jarre also explains how he used them to make his music.
Naming conventions
When Jarre likes a name for a song, he sticks with it. His works with repeating titles (so far) include Oxygène Parts I–VI (1976) then Oxygène VII–XIII (1997), then Équinoxe Parts 1–8 (1978) followed by Équinoxe Infinity Movements 1–10 (2018), Magnetic Fields Parts 1–5 (1981), Chronologie Parts 1–8 (1993), and Rendez-Vous tracks from First Rendez-Vous to Last Rendez-Vous (Ron's Piece) (1986).
His repeating-title works span an impressive 50 tracks across 8 albums.
Bringing the Studio Outdoors
Performing Oxygène live in the 1970s required a complex and carefully engineered analog setup, including the ARP 2600, which shaped the world of music production at the time, the EMS VCS 3, and RMI Harmonic Synthesizer, each manually programmed and tuned. Other artists were using these tools in live shows as well (Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, among others and of course, Vangelis), but few used them on the scale and complexity of Jarre. They were minimalists by comparison.
Jarre set himself apart by integrating tape loops, custom-built synthesizers, and large-scale light and laser displays, often performed in outdoor, with a series of monumental settings. His live shows were multimedia spectacles, combining technology, music, and visuals on such a massive scale.
In the 1970s, Jarre used up to 10 keyboards for a single track, and by the 1990s, as technology advanced, he incorporated up to 12 keyboards in his shows, maintaining his signature analog sound with custom builds.
Synchronizing Jarre's performances was challenging, as MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface - a truly deep dive here) had not yet been invented to connect and control multiple devices. These shows pushed the abilities of sound and lighting of the time.
Jarre is also known for monumental performances to huge crowds. While possibly influenced by Pink Floyd’s 1972 concert at Pompeii, Jarre’s shows always had an audience. He performed in 1979 at La Concorde in Paris for a crowd of 1 million people. His monumental concerts like the 1981 Concerts in China were iconic and his 1997 Moscow show for 3.5 million people, set Guinness World Records.
In 1999, he performed at the pyramids of Giza to “celebrate the Millennium.”
Legacy
Jarre’s early experimental single La Cage/Erosmachine from 1971 went largely unnoticed at the time, but it was a bridge from the tape loops that struggles to find harmony. His work was utterly revolutionary in the analog era.
Jarre inspired French acts like Daft Punk and Air, as well as artists like Trent Reznor and Hans Zimmer. It’s hard not to see some of that with Reznor’s Ghosts IV, an album with 36 tracks titled “Ghosts” - and 2 hidden ones.
There’s a whole subculture of Jarre fans recreating his music on tiny Casio keyboards (Oxygene IV on Casio).
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There were many other electronic artists at this time, but none with the same level of commercial popularity. Brian Eno’s Ambient music, such as Music for Airports (1978), considered his most influential work, sold roughly 200,000 copies vs. the multimillions sold by Jarre. Kraftwerk was one of the most influential bands in the genre, but their sales still never approached Jarre’s. Influence isn’t always so easily measured by sales, of course: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) barely sold in its first 5 years. Eno said it was 30,000 copies, but “everyone who bought it started a band.” It sold over 50,000, but his point is there.
A bit more on technique
His use of tape loops, a labor-intensive process involving manually splicing and threading magnetic tape to create repeating sound patterns, was revolutionary. Techniques like tape speed manipulation and reversal allowed Jarre to craft intricate soundscapes, long before digital tools made such processes simpler. As he explains in this video ontape looping.
You can definitely hear his influence in the music of Air. Thanks for this!