Planet Jarre: 50 Years of Music


Planet Jarre: 50 Years of Music is a compilation album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released on 14 September 2018 to commemorate Jarre's 50 years in the music business.
A total of forty-one tracks were chosen by Jarre himself for inclusion, among them two new songs. Jarre remastered, and in some cases "retouched", the tracks himself. During the process, he decided that he had pursued four quite different styles of composition and therefore divided the project into four "universes" - "Soundscapes", "Themes", "Sequences" and "Explorations and Early Works". Some tracks were released in 5.1 surround sound.

Contents and release

Jarre's new-mix "retouched" versions for the album comprised Chronologie Parts 1 and 4, Oxygène Parts 2, 8 and 20, Equinoxe Parts 4 and 7, "Bells" and "Fourth Rendez-Vous"; as well as edits of the 2004 AERO version of "Last Rendez-vous" and the intro section of "Ethnicolor", a three-minute "Waiting for Cousteau" excerpt, and the title track from 1988's Revolutions.
Two fuller 2018 remixes were also presented. 1984's "Zoolookologie" appeared in a new trance-inspired version, and there was a reworking of the 1982 live version of "Magnetic Fields Part 2" from Les Concerts en Chine.
The "Explorations and Early Works" section of the album contained two previously unavailable rare or unreleased tracks. One was "Aor Bleu". The other was one of the pieces from the super-rare Musique pour Supermarché album, 1983's single-copy art/collectable-commerce experiment. Although the latter track was billed as a demo, it was later identified as "Part 1" from the album.
All of the other rare tracks had been released seven years earlier on the Essentials & Rarities compilation. These comprised three more GRM-era pieces, two tracks from 1973's Les Granges Brulees, and "Hypnose".
The compilation release was accompanied by the announcement of Equinoxe Infinity, a 40th anniversary sequel to his 1978 album Equinoxe, due for release on 16 November 2018.

5.1 Tracks

  • Circus
  • Equinoxe 2
  • Equinoxe 5
  • Exit
  • Oxygène 15
  • Oxygène 17
  • Oxygène 2
  • Stardust
  • Switched on Leon
  • Opening
  • Souvenir of China
  • Zoolookologie

Formats

  • Standard jewel-cased double CD
  • Digipack double CD
  • Box set – Cabinet "Super Deluxe Fan Box", 2 CD, 2 cassettes, MP3 download option with 5.1 surround sound – limited to 4000 numbered copies
  • Vinyl – 4 LP 180g, MP3 download option – limited to 3500 copies