Jean-Michel Jarre Explores History of Electronic Music With John Carpenter, Edward Snowden, and More

image

(photo: Tom Sheehan)

If you could only select one artist to tell the story of electronic music on record, France’s Jean-Michel Jarre might be it. A giant in electronic music since long before the term “EDM” was a glint in the eye of Calvin Harris or any of today’s pop-star DJs, Jarre released his first album, Deserted Palace, in 1972.

Four decades later, he took on the herculean labor of love of telling the story of electronic music over two albums – last year’s Electronica Vol 1: The Time Machine and the follow-up, Electronica Vol 2: The Heart of Noise, out this week.

To celebrate the music he loves, he put together a who’s who of collaborators, from M83, Moby, and Air to Pete Townshend, Cyndi Lauper, and horror movie director John Carpenter. Jarre explains that it was because everybody he asked wanted to participate that the project had to be broken down into two albums.

“When I started thinking about my wish list, everybody having said yes, I suddenly said, ‘OK, I’m going to divide this project in electronica in two parts, because it was too long,’” he says.

As surprising a collaborator as a rock legend like Townshend or Carpenter (known for movies like The Fog and Halloween) might be, the most unusual cameo on either of the two albums by far is Edward Snowden. Yes, the same Edward Snowden who once worked for the CIA before becoming a folk hero to many for his whistle-blowing about global surveillance programs by the National Security Agency in 2013.

While Snowden has been a source of dissent, with some viewing him as a hero and others a traitor, Jarre is unambiguous on which side of the fence he lies. “I was thinking recently too about someone like Edward Snowden, who is, for me, the illustration of the modern hero,” Jarre says. “At one stage, someone is standing and saying not stop, but just be careful.”

For Jarre, that is so important because he wants people to be aware that technology isn’t always the savior of society that it’s portrayed to be. “I love this idea that technology and digital technology is neutral; it depends on where you use it,” he says. “It’s like the atom; when Oppenheimer discovered the fission of the atom, suddenly it was opening so many doors for biology, for science, but also it created the atomic bomb. So you always have to get this kind of distance with technology.”

That ambiguity of technology is explored continuously throughout the two records. “This whole relationship with technology is one of the recurrent themes all along… the fact that technology is mutual and depends on the way you are using it. It’s great to have the world and all the knowledge of the world in your pocket, but also it has some dark sides, and it’s illustrated in album one with the track I’ve done with Laurie Anderson, this kind of dark love song between a smartphone and a human being,” he says. “Consider the idea that lots of the time, most of us choose to touch their smartphone more than their own partner, so this is something [where] we have this ambiguous and also erotic relationship with our smartphone or connected object.”

One area of technology Jarre wanted to stay away from was the modern way of collaborations, in which you never meet the artist you are recording with. His insistence on working in person with every collaborator is why the project took four years. To him, it was well worth it, though.

“I’m not a big fan of the word ‘featuring,’ because it means you’re going to send a file through the net and somebody somewhere in the world will add some topline vocals, synth, guitar – and you’re not going to meet with them, never even going to talk to them, and it’s more for marketing reasons or commercial reasons than anything else. In this case, as you understand, it was almost the opposite,” he says. “In this project you have obviously legends and people very know, but also beginners. If you think of acts like F— Buttons or Gesafflestein, they are known by certain people, but not like the Who or Moby. My choice in the project was really to work with people who have an intrinsic touch, and also there is a reason why for every artist in terms of sound, in terms of source of inspiration. And this is what has been the guide, because I traveled physically to meet with people, to spend some time with people. I must say I’ve been really touched by the fact people opened their door and gave so much to my album and to my project.”