If this review had a subtitle, it would be “Rave in the Mausoleum”. Jean-Michel Jarre threw everything he had at the crowd – state of the art lightshow, earthquake-level bass, eardrum-shattering decibels, remixed greatest hits, thumping kick-drums, retina-frazzling lazers and more – but the audience remained politely, firmly seated. The best anyone could muster was head-nodding, muted cheers and sporadic “Radio Gaga”-style overhead handclaps (which look weird when the clapper is sitting down).
It made the whole experience frustrating and rather flat. The venue being seated was a factor, but maybe a bigger one was that the primarily over-50s audience came to hear the synth-prog stoner wibbling of Jarre’s Seventies pomp rather than to shake their collective booty.
Jarre was centre stage, surrounded by digital touchscreen kit and ancient synths
Jarre arrived in Brighton on the back of the best new music he’s put out in years, possibly decades. His long career, dating back to his 1976 global breakthrough hit album Oxgene (sales of 12 million, the best-selling French album ever), has had massive commercial ups, including vast concerts in locations such as the Pyramids of Giza and Houston, Texas. However, he’s also taken his share of flak for drifting into flavourless bombast and New Age noodling. The latter was forgotten with the appearance of two recent consecutive albums, Electronica 1 and 2, wherein he collaborated with an exhaustive Who’s Who of electronic music history. The guest-list included contemporaries such as Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter, Eighties synth-pop icons such as Gary Numan, Yello and Pet Shop Boys, and 21st Century dancefloor dons such as Boys Noize and Siriusmo.
If these albums were impressive, his latest concert incarnation was flashily over-the-top, from the giant floating LED cube that accompanied set-opener “The Heart of Noise” to the sci-fi spectacle of Jarre playing his “lazer harp” on the lead track of Electronica 1, “The Time Machine”. The latter track had something of Kraftwerk about it, but where Kraftwerk are the progenitors of techno, electro and much else, Jarre has always been the acorn from which trance grew, a fact that became abundantly clear as he revamped his music so that it had the hands-in-the air punch of a Tiesto or a Paul van Dyk. Given the loudness and frenetic visuals, this would’ve been wild fun, except that everyone’s arses were superglued to their pews.
Jarre knows which way his bread is buttered, though, and dived regularly into his two best-loved albums, offering selections from Oxygene and Equinoxe. A typical run was a battering slice of techno called “Exit”, featuring a video sample of CIA whistle-blower Edward Snowden pointing out our right to privacy and asking “If you don’t stand up for it, who will?”, followed by “Equinoxe 7”, and then the gigantic Gesaffelstein hook-up “Conquistador”, which sounded like a Chemical Brothers drum barrage.
Dressed in a simple black suit and wearing sunglasses, Jarre was centre stage, surrounded by a combination of digital touchscreen kit and ancient synths, while at the back on either side were two assistants attending to extra effects and percussion. He occasionally grabbed a mic and addressed us, telling us at the start of the encore that we were about to hear a piece from the latest chapter in his “Oxygene project”, “Oxygene 17”, which turned out to be suitably catchy, boding well for the album’s release in December.
He then concluded the night with a pure trance banger, “Stardust”, originally created with the Dutch DJ-producer Armin van Buuren. Finally bodies raised from their seats and waved themselves about for a couple of minutes. But it was too little too late. This purposefully sense-boggling show would go down a storm at a festival or dance event. It’s to be hoped Jarre takes it there, as he must have found the response in the Brighton Centre tonight disappointingly underwhelming.
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