release date: 1985
format: vinyl (1986 reissue)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5]
producer: Jean-Michel Jarre
label: Disques Dreyfus - nationality: France
Compilation album by 'Jean Michel' Jarre, which shares almost same tracklist as The Essential Jean Michel Jarre from 1983 with the exception of two compositions. Both albums contain 14 tracks and only two compositions have been exchanged on the '85 album: Track #8 "Souvenir de Chine" from the live album Les Concerts en Chine (May 1982) and track #13 "Zoolookologie" from Zoolook (Nov. 1984) are new additions and they replace "The Overture" and "Equinoxe 1" on the '83 album.
I don't think a compilation album by Jarre works all too well, except if you mostly enjoy his more popular compositions but then this album doesn't only focus on that. I think, one of the key points to this, is that Jarre works on so many arenas - he makes progressive and ambient (introspetive) pieces of music, and then he also experiments with popular melody-founded pieces, which I don't necessarily combine that well. Anyway, I have always felt that his music is mostly album-oriented, so by picking out pieces from this and that and then putting them next to one another doesn't present his music that well.
