Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise
Jean-Michel Jarre
(Columbia)
Three and a half stars
Jean-Michel Jarre returns with his second album in less than a year and, once again, gathers an exceptional roster of collaborators to deliver an often compelling piece of work.
Eclectic hardly does justice to a list of guest artists that includes Yello, The Orb, Peaches, Gary Numan and US whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The latter delivers a spoken polemic on privacy over a strung-out techno beat.
Electronica 2 is ultimately defined by how well it fuses Jarre's musical style with the artists he has co-opted. Brick England, his work with Pet Shop Boys, is a complex brew of Neil Tennant's distinctive vocal tones and deft programming.
Cyndi Lauper's Swipe to the Right, a seeming comment on certain social-media apps, effortlessly melds her ethereal vocal style with thundering EDM.
As One, Jarre's work with Primal Scream, samples the British band's 1990 single Come Together to fashion a riot of past, present and future music. But it is his understated work with Julia Holter that lives longest in the memory. These Creatures is a bittersweet and haunting electronic ballad of profound scale.
nmarch@thenational.ae
