Oxymore

Musique concrète is a musical style in which each sound—manipulated and decontextualized—is fixed onto a medium (magnetic tape, cassette, or digital format). In this way, in musique concrète, the sound itself becomes the foundation of the composition and is as important as melody or rhythm.

Pierre Henry (1927–2017) is considered, along with Pierre Schaeffer, the creator of musique concrète and one of the pioneers of electroacoustic music. Together, they founded the Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC) in Paris in 1951. Later, Jean-Michel Jarre studied with them during his time at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1968.

It is therefore not surprising that one of the planned collaborations for Jarre’s album Electronica (2015) was to be with Henry—though it ultimately never took place. After Henry’s death in 2017, his widow provided Jarre with a wealth of original sounds that had been recorded for that collaboration, and these became the foundation of Oxymore (2022), the French artist’s twenty-second album.

However, Oxymore is neither musique concrète nor experimental, even though fans of Jarre’s more classic period may not find here the inspired melodies that once made him so popular. The manipulated samples are there, but Jarre mixes them with sequences and rhythmic foundations to create an overwhelming collage of noise, beats, and melodic sketches—excessive, relentless, giving the listener no respite. Nor is it watered-down techno, another recurring criticism since its release. Oxymore is unmistakably a Jarre album if we understand that what makes him a sui generis musician is his ability to reinvent himself, to mutate from one record to the next: let’s not forget that his previous work, Amazonia (2021), was a purely ambient album. And Oxymore is brutally festive.

Despite what its title might suggest, Oxymore is much more closely related to Zoolook (1984) than to Oxygene (1976). The textures are never crystalline; instead, the entire album carries a patina of “grit,” of urban contamination. The rhythms are dry, and the sequences sharp and frenzied, as in “Neon Lips.” There are cyberpunk moments (“Sonic Land”), primitive ones (“Animal Genesis”), and industrial ones (“Brutalism”). And there is no shortage of yet another foray into danceable rhythms (“Epica”). If Zoolook was “the opera of all the voices in the world,” Oxymore is a creature born from an artificial, contradictory, and dizzying world.

Oxymore and virtual reality

That at 74 years old, Jean-Michel Jarre is still active and producing music at this level is something few would have expected. But the fact that he is also experimenting with new technologies and formats to accompany and distribute his music is even more surprising. Oxymore was conceived from the start to be recorded in binaural sound (it is also available in stereo, 5.1, and Dolby Atmos), aiming for an immersive experience rather than a traditional passive listening one. With the same goal, Oxyville was launched—a virtual reality world in which the album was presented through a VR concert, a format Jarre seems committed to, having used it twice before: in the event Welcome to the Other Side: Concert from Virtual Notre Dame (2021), where his music was set within a virtual recreation of the destroyed Paris cathedral, and Alone Together (2020), another VR concert held during the pandemic.

The results of these virtual reality experiments may be debatable; perhaps they lack imagination for simply transferring real-world experiences into a virtual environment—which, by definition, allows for infinite possibilities. But that takes nothing away from his merit: while many artists of his generation have chosen to live off past glories, Jarre continues to seek new technological and musical paths, taking risks and surprising his audience. In the case of Oxymore, the results are decidedly positive.