release date: Apr. 1986
format: cd (2015 remaster)
[album rate: 2 / 5] [2,18]
producer: Jean Michel Jarre
label: Sony Music - nationality: France
Tracklist: 1. "First rendez-vous" - 2. "Second rendez-vous" - 3. "Third rendez-vous" - 4. "Fourth rendez-vous" - 5. "Fifth rendez-vous" - 6. "Last rendez-vous (Ron's Piece)"
8th studio album release by Jean Michel Jarre originally released on Disques Dreyfus. Before this, he released the album Music for Supermarkets in 1983, Zoolook in '84, as well as a live album from a concert in China. Of course I heard and listened to those albums but I never really liked his new more popular style initiated with Magnetic Fields from 1981. With this he continues his progressive synthpop by exploring more popular musical territory, he had touched on his '81 and '84 albums. He has moved away from an entirely experimental and more minimalist form, removed guitars and vocals and instead added more synths to his soundscape.
Especially the track "Fourth Rendez-vous" was a popular single from this album.
Instead of pursuing an artistic approach, it seems he fell for the popularity (and money?) that his new age pop songs attracted. In the early 1980s TV channels enthusiastically stumbled over each other to record and transmit his gigantic live concerts and performances soothed in laser light shows with millions of spectators. I simply disliked his progressive electropop and synthesizer pop ballads, and this album isn't any better. He dwells on musical themes and loops he created in the 1970s by adding electronic drums, and keyboard bass-lines to make it more funky or disco-like. This is muzak when it's mostly just annoyingly neutral.
[ allmusic.com 3 / 5 stars ]
