Equinoxe - Jean-Michel Jarre

Following on from the desert island Oxygene album, Jean Michel Jarre shows no letting up with the release of Equinoxe, which plays out as an epic eight part suite. The album is unmistakably Jean Michel Jarre and offers mesmerising electronic affects with rapid spinning sequencer washes and bubbling synthesizer tones, which all combine to create an outer worldly electronic sensation. One of the most impressive aspects of the album, along with its true pioneering nature its purity and originality, with no one segment sounding like another. The fact that Jarre used more than 13 different synthesizers to create the album is perhaps a ...  Read the complete review

Equinoxe. If your going to recognise ANY Jarre from JUST the opening bars of the very first track of the album then its going to be this. Especially if your British, 30 something and male as it was used on stuff like "Where There's Life" & "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" tv shows as theme & incidental music. Back then everyone had some Jarre in their tv music archive and Equinoxe was one of the most used. Again like Oxygene its got a very space travel type feel to it (probably because I associate it with Arthur C Clarke) and it's yet another great example of how well Jean-Michel can create ambient ...  Read the complete review

After gaining unprecedented success with ‘Oxygene,’ French electronic composer Jean-Michel Jarre began work on a follow-up. ‘Equinoxe,’ a forty-minute musical journey performed on synthesiser, organ, keyboards, mellophonium, mellotron, Farfisa organ and rhythm programmer, owes a great debt to its predecessor but also manages to sound more accomplished and spectacular as a result. Equinoxe seems to rectify the mistakes made by Oxygene, the little things that didn’t affect its popularity but did affect its chances of being taken seriously as an electronic classic. STYLE Equinoxe is divided into eight (fairly-) distinctive parts. ...  Read the complete review

Jarre wrote Equinoxe as the summary of a whole day. The early part being sunrise, theough the day, a band playing in the evening (in the rain), and then over. It's his fourth album, or second if you believe that Jarre's works really ought to begin with "Oxygene", his 1976 masterpiece. Equinoxe really carries on where Oxygene left off, and develops musically in the same manner. It's not a clone of Oxygene though, and manages to retain the flavour of Oxygene while being more diverse in its outlook. Again, this will please Tangerine Dream, Can and Kraftwerk devotees, as well as Vangelis fans (I'll take Jarre fans for granted ...  Read the complete review