Jean‐Michel Jarre

Jarre started out at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales under Pierre Schaeffer, surrounded by tape loops and guys who thought a synthesizer was a scientific instrument rather than a way to make a hit. He was the black sheep in a white lab coat, obsessed with melody while the avant-garde purists were busy recording the sound of train whistles and falling glass. He got kicked out for being too pop, but he took that concrete foundation and his VCS3 synth to his home kitchen, where he tracked Oxygène because no label would touch a guy making instrumental electronic music in 1976. He didn't just play the notes; he treated the studio like a giant modular patch bay, layering the Eminent 310 organ through Small Stone phaser pedals to get that signature swirl that defined the late seventies. Then the money rolled in and the ego followed, leading to those massive city-sized concerts that were basically just laser-show vanity projects for the Guinness World Records. He spent years chasing the spectacle while the records got increasingly polished and hollow, but if you look past the fireworks, the guy understood the physical weight of a sequence better than almost anyone in the French scene.

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