Jean-Michel Jarre - Equinoxe
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Free Music Notes for Equinoxe
Free Music Review: My first
Hit: 5 Stars
I can still remember the first time I heard this album - I was simply blown away! I guess I was about 13 years old, and an older dude in my class listened to Jarre on his walkman. You could hear the bleeps and bloops oozing from his headphone from miles away!
I bought the album on vinyl and listened to it until the needle had to be replaced. And once I got the album on CD years later, I was amazed how clear the sound was...
This was the album that introduced me to Jarre's music, and that has been my favorite Jarre-album ever since. Most people like Oxygene best, but I like this one. I like listening to it in a completely dark room, with headphones on. I imagine that I'm somewhere in a kind of magical place, witnessing the sunrise. I can't help it, the music is capturing. And I always feel sad when the last song on the album starts...
If you aren't familiar with Jarre's music, start with this record, or with Oxygene - and then move on through Jarre's other albums, like a journey through the musical universe of Jean Michel Jarre.
Free Music Review: Just about the greatest album of all time !!!
Hit: 5 Stars
If I lost my entire CD collection tommorow (and it's quite large) first thing on my mind would be to replace Equinox by JMJ.
I have this theory that the second attempt or project is very often the best - eg Mad Max - the second and the best of that film trilogy.
Well Its certainly true of Jean Michel Jarre. Oxygene came in 76 and was a breath of fresh air that we still remember fondly. By the time he was making Equinox in 78 he had learned all the lessons and was still so good musically, so intense and energetic in terms of creativity. This work has imortalised him.
My first hearing of this was somewhere unusal - Equinox Part 1 was used on Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV program to depict a last perfect day on Earth when the Sun swells into a red giant and all our oceans dry up signalling the natural end of the world. Well this is the most perfect depiction I've ever seen put to music. It filled me with wonder.
That's exactly what the opening sequence in Equinox always does - profound and powerfull. You can't ignore it. Hair-raising.Yet also beautiful and earthly like the whole of Equinox - right through to the the end which feels like the end of an unforgettable day, tearful and nostalgic. Equinox involkes the seasons, life on Earth in all it's festivities but not merily an observation of nature. This is through the mind of a human and conveys the awarness of the beautiful Earth around him, a theme to which Jean Michel would return.
I recall in 1981 cycling to school with My Sony walkman playing Equinox while all around me was the spring morning and the fog layers over the marshland in the west of Ireland. This is what Equinox is about. Sunrise and sunsets.Nothing about electronics. Go ask JMJ.
I always imagine that Peer Gynt himself witnissing the sun rise over the Sahera would have taken his hat off to Equinox.
They say in marketing "never change a classic". Well to top it all off we have a wonderful album cover which I hope will never be tampered with by the record company.
Free Music Review: Excellent
Hit: 5 Stars
Really excellent, I discovered Jarre when I was 5 (with this album !) and more than 20 years after this is one of my favourites ! If you haven't heard of JMJ before (despite his mega-concerts), buy it and listen to it. You won't regret.Free Music Review: Even Night Equals the Day
Hit: 5 Stars
Where Jarre spent only three months mixing his Oxygene album, Equinoxe required an estimated seven months. I believe I can safely say that the effort was well worth the trouble. I have recently re-discovered this album, only to listen to it more frequently than the Oxygene album. The latter, while groundbreaking at the time, is a splendid atmospheric saunter. Equinoxe, on the other hand, is a symphonic dance, one where Jarre has found his niche and continues to expand on his ideas of Earth-inspired melodies.
Every track has something to offer. Jarre's current modus operandi is based on the two equinoxes: vernal (spring), which occurs on March 21, and autumnal on September 23. Jarre will revisit these months 25 years later with his Sessions 2000 release, on which two tracks are titled March 23 and September 14. (Jarre's influences do not escape him: two other tracks on Sessions are titled for the months of the solstices.)
The idea of the equinox is vaster than that of, say, oxygen. Where his first album played on the sounds of wind, air, light, and space, an equinox occurs when the sun is aligned with the equator. The Earth will be immersed in light for 12 hours during the day, and submerged in darkness for 12 hours at night, equilibrium of life. Spring announces new life, and re-growth; autumn is the preparation for survival, or the expectation of death.
Jarre carefully avoids references to death, but doesn't hesitate to utilize the idea of life. Weather is ubiquitous in nature, inevitable even on uninhabited planets. Jarre incorporates these themes into his music, the most recognizable being the thunderstorm on Equinoxe 8. The prelude in this track will soon become a famous concert favorite: L'Orchestre sous la pluie (Band in the Rain), performed to great effect on a Barrel organ.
Blatant on Equinoxe 6, Jarre reverts to a more old-fashioned electronica approach to the music, almost taking a step back from his previous album. In so doing, there is a familiarity invoked from the haunting Deserted Palace album. The track is still a step forward, but makes a grateful nod to the history of electronica. Still, note that Equinoxe 6 is almost a slow motion foreshadowing of Magnetic Fields 1.
By this time, Jarre has polished the idea of a concept album, keeping a similar theme, or a certain key or tempo, through all the tracks. The leitmotif is an undercurrent of a dark musical passage. He also blends the tracks together, ultimately creating a 40-minute rhapsody. What he brings from Oxygene is the familiar swooshing of oceanic air, and a more refined bubbling effect. Those high-pitched time-compressed tones -- like crystalline leaves on aspens in the breeze -- are formally standardized in this album, becoming a trademark that can be heard in nearly all his albums henceforth.
Free Music Review: Gloriously Splendid Album !!!
Hit: 5 Stars
Of all the Electronic Music from that '70 period and leading up
to now, Jarre's stands the test of time. His orchestral approach to sounds and instruments, be they synthesized or sampled distinguishes him from most of yesterday's and today's brass.
How many trance, dance, techno... songs have we all heard that begin the same, have the same damn drum arrangement and even same
string/pad chord work, that's because today's synth nerds all need 200 synths just to make a simple bass line - with no musical theory knowledge, where as look at Jarre. He had around 8 synths and made the masterpieces that is Oxygene! Even his fellow musicians of the time Vangelis, Klaus Schulze all pioneered the way electronic music was made and communicated to the people, by using the minimum amount of instruments and maximum amount of creativity and knowledge!
Equinoxe to this day sounds fresh just as it did in 1978, one of the cool things Jarre does on both Oxygene and Equinoxe is treat
his left and right channels seperately, infact if you listen especially to Oxygene 2 and Equinoxe 4 there's difference between what you hear on the left channel compared to the right - which is the one that contains all the echo's and effects.
This makes his music sound fresh(As if it's been recorded today)
and great on stereo equipment.
Long Live Jarre.
Thanks for bringing to the world accesible ambience music fused with classy pop tunes and reaching 'extravaganza of a life time' levels at concerts - that have yet to be reached by others.