In Pictures: Jean-Michel Jarre back on stage in the UK for first time in 5 years
Jean-Michel Jarre returned to the UK stage at the weekend as he performed at the BlueDot ‘Festival of Discovery’…
Described as “an intergalactic festival of music, science, arts, culture and the exploration of space” by the organisers – the BlueDot Festival is at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire and it lasted for three days.
The line-up featured a wealth of talented artists, including the similarly electronic (and similarly French) band Air and Beth Orton (not French).
Jarre played on the spectacular Lovell Stage, situated in the shadow of the mighty Lovell telescope, and as can be seen from these pictures by Raph Pour-Hashemi, it looked like an amazing evening’s entertainment (scroll down for more photos below).
Jean Michel-Jarre recently issued his Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise album, which includes collaborations with the likes of Pet Shop Boys, Primal Scream, Gary Numan and Hans Zimmer and Air‘s Twentyears box came out last week.
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I was at BlueDot specifically to see JMJ
I was left somewhat disappointed by him in all honesty.
Visually the concert was stunning but musically, for me as a fan of his for 40 years, it left me cold. I know he’s out to promote his new album but he literally rammed it down our throats with only 6 of 19 tracks played not from the latest Electronica albums. Two of those tracks were barely recognisable as he played everything in a techno style.
He did have at least two other musicians on stage with him if anyone did think he was playing solo.
I had been contemplating going to the indoor shows this autumn but I’ll pass now. If I wanted to hear music played four to the floor I could go to a techno club for that.
The images projected onto the Lovell Telescope had nothing to do with Jarre, that was an art installation by Brian Eno.
He’s kind of turned into his own tribute act. Rather sad. And he looks a bit preposterous trying to look 28 (he is welcome to judge me anytime he likes! :-)
He really played Saltley Gasworks in Brum ,as thanks for being a student here back in the day.
Half of the above is true.
:-)
Oxygene remains seminal.
ats.
Looks quite interesting. I’m off to see him at the O2 in October. He was at one of the Kraftwerk shows at Tate Modern – Trans Europe Express, I think. I wondered if he’s have loads of 3D graphics in his new show.
Not sure the O2 Arena will be quite as magnificent as the Lovell Stage though.
I feel rather sorry for Jarre – he was a fore-runner in electronic music in the 70s and 80s and I do think he can claim to be one of the godfather’s of ambient music. He seems to have ended up in the box marked “cheese” next to Mantovani, which seems rather unfair.
Mantovani sounds like a brand of cheese…
Yeah I guess in the 70’s Jarre’s albums were placed with other “long instrumental music” in the record stores because there were not other way of label his weird sounds that everybody misused in documentaries. The 80’s were worst with all the new age stuff, you want Jarre? go look where Yanni is. True story: in various record shops in my city they used to place Rick Wakeman’s records beside Richard Clayderman’s, you know blonde guy with a piano…
In some French record shop, one can sometimes find Jean-Michel Jarre records beside Yanni’s, Richard Clayderman and…Mike Oldfield.
So sad…
After years of touring with his mates , he can now push all the buttons by himself , ahh.