Jean-Michel Jarre recently toured the US for the first time with his Electronica 2 Tour.  It’s hard to imagine that one of the founders of electronic music, especially the one who first integrated visuals with live performance, has never toured the US before.  “I never did music thinking about how many people I could reach, I did music because I couldn’t do anything else; it was like an addiction.”   

That addiction is what fueled Jean-Michel to explore different concepts for each of his classic albums.  “Oxygène is a manifesto about climate change and Chronologie, the notion of time.”  He was really influenced by Stephen Hawking. “Electronic music is always linked to time and space and with science fiction.”  This influence is heard in his recent Electronica 1 album, which was subtitled The Time Machine. 

Since Jean-Michel reworked many of his classics for the tour, we probed about the possibility of remixes.  “Remix is a very special exercise and the sounds have changed so much in the past 15 years.” People are listening to so much more bass and less high frequencies. “I reworked not by changing the structure but to make it more friendly for 2017 ears.” 

Jean-Michel recent work seems to fit the revival of legendary dance music pioneers like Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder.  “I don’t know if I consider myself as a legend, especially in America.”  He explained that electronic music exploded in the US with EDM, but “dance music was not born with Avicii.”  Though dance music is only one sector of electronic music, and electronic music has no boundaries.   “Suddenly EDM is looking for its roots and its great to feel the sense of this tour that electronic music has legacy, a family and a future.”