Jean Michel Jarre — Brutalism

Released as the lead single for October’s Oxymore project, it seems that once again, some parts of JMJ’s fan base are not happy about a man with a 50+ year career, and deep roots in European experimental music daring to do something slightly off piste. It feels as if there’s a perpetual demand for him to constantly retread old ground, and churn out swirling ambient concept albums for the rest of time.

The thing is, if you listen to this single, all the clues about who he really is as an artist are there in plain sight. Oxymore is billed as an homage to Pierre Henry, and Jarre cites Henry as a significant influence in the way he approached (especially) his early work in electronic music. You can hear echoes of his time at GRM, and with Stockhausen. You can hear La Cage, and Erosmachine, Geometry of Love, and Moon Machine nestling in this mix, and all sorts of other things stripped through this four minutes. It’s not the warm, soft-edged impressionism of Oxygène. Of course it isn’t, that was more than half a lifetime ago, and it’s not 1976 any more.

What it is is very much darker and spikier than the casual JMJ listener would quite believe, but anyone who knows the even slightest thing about his work will understand that he’s still pushing at his own boundaries. Frankly, a man at this stage of his career being less than content to rest on his artistic laurels and coast on a hard won recognition should be a cause of celebration. What is very much is, is European. As Jarre himself has said, this is a type of music that is recognisably distinct from the structures and conventions of rock & roll .Anyone who has listened to any amount of European electronica from the 70s onward will see that this fits in right there.

If I’m being honest, I’m slightly less convinced by the Oxyville metaverse component of the project, but that’s not because of JMJ, more because of my general feeling that the metaverse is a thing that few of us really want in the way that the likes of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta wants to provide it. For someone as jaded as me, it feels just like the brief buzz around SecondLife all over again.

But, that little aside apart, Brutalism is intriguing, and I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of Oxymore. It does actually feel that yer Lyonnais is in a rich