Jean-Michel Jarre on The Knix Mix

Jean-Michel Jarre

There is perhaps no one more fitting to appear on a radio show devoted to European electropop than French musician, producer, and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, one of the great pioneers of electronic music.  I was beyond thrilled to get a chance to chat with Jarre about his newly released album Electronica 2:  The Heart of Noise, which I have been playing in heavy rotation on The Knix Mix since its May release.

Never one to do anything halfway, some of Jarre's four-decade long career highlights include having the best-selling ever French album, his 1976 debut Oxygène, holding the record for the largest ever audience at an outdoor venue, and being the first Western musician to be officially invited to perform in the People's Republic of China in 1981.  

In the same bigger is better vein, his two-part album project took five years to complete and features a list of 30 collaborators that reads like the Who's Who of the electronic music genre. The results were Electronica 1: The Time Machine and Electronica 2:  The Heart of Noise.  (Electronica 1 hit the airwaves in October of last year.)  Intriguingly, the project includes a few collaborators who aren't primarily known for music such as whistleblower Edward Snowden and director John Carpenter, who is known for films like Halloween but is a talented composer as well. Jarre chose people who were a source of inspiration to him over the course of his career. The list includes early pioneers in their own right like Air and Tangerine Dream (one of the late Edgar Froese's last projects) and contemporary artists like M83 and Gesafellstein. Naturally, I was quite excited that Gary Numan appears on the track "Here for You" - one of my favorites on Electronica 2. Other names plucked from the music charts during my formative years (Yes, the 80s!) that I am partial to are Vince Clarke, Pet Shop Boys, and Cyndi Lauper.

Jarre actually traveled to work with his collaborators in person rather than simply exchanging digital files by Email. Jarre is aware that creating music can be a very solitary exercise, much like a writer or a painter, and it took courage for people to welcome him into their home studios. Basically, electronic music geeks sharing their grown up toys! The result is music that blends the unique qualities of each artist with Jarre's own well-honed style.

Have a listen to the complete interview and learn more about the project, the underlying themes, and where Jarre thinks electronic music is headed in the future.  Keep up to date with upcoming news and tour information here!

Soundtracks for Electronic Loving Sci Fi Folk

I'm in all kinds of love with Chronicles of the Wasteland/Turbo Kid Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Le Matos!  If you're a child of the 80s like I am, you're going to crush on the nod to analog synths and 80s movie soundtracks.  I haven't even seen the movie, but I don't care!  Check out a track for yourself and then go to the Bandcamp page to preview a few more tracks!

Also brand new in soundtrack land is Star Wars Headspace.  Another thing children of the 80s can get bbehind The album features various artists like Kaskade and Bonobo, but I am naturally most enamored of the Röyksopp track "Bounty Hunters." Check it out!

DJ Knix of WERU's The Knix Mix Q&A

I've done a few Q&A profiles of artists and other WERU programmers along the way, and I thought it would be a bit of fun to answer a few questions myself.  Of course, you know I spin electronic music on The Knix Mix every Friday night from 10 p.m. to midnight. If you don't, you can listen by going to weru.org and live stream or listen to a previously recorded show.  I'd always been aware of WERU being from this part of Maine. I graduated from Brewer High School in 1988, which happens to be the same year WERU was getting underway at the Hen House in Blue Hill. When I returned to Maine after a decade in Massachusetts I moved just down the road from the station. There's a great sense of community at the station, and it doesn't hurt that I get to play the kind of music I wanted to hear. I've been at the helm of The Knix Mix for over two years and counting.  Which is, come to think of it, one of the reasons I coined "Knix Picks." So I could keep track of all the new music in that span of time that I love, love, love!

1. Favorite genre of music? My heart belongs to electronic music, which encompasses a range of styles. Basically, I’m a total child of the 80s. British New Wave was the soundtrack of my youth, and I subsequently love anything that has synthpop origins. Ah, nostalgia!  Electropop, electro house, electro clash, French house, club/dance...Sensing a theme here? Really, I adore anything you can dance to.
2. Favorite band? It’s hard to name just one, but there is exceptional music to dance to coming out of Europe. Artists like Röyksopp, Etienne de Crécy, Autokratz, Vitalic, The Bloody Beetroots, Yuksek, Simian Mobile Disco and Soulwax. I also love music to brood to. Bands that have that angst-ridden post-punk influence like Motorama, The Juan MacLean and White Lies.
3. Favorite song? I’m really crushing on Etienne de Crécy generally, but “Someone Like You” on Essentials (Best of) is amazing. It also appears on Super Discount 2 as “Fast Track.” Other tracks that I adore are Vitalic’s “Poison Lips,” “On a Train” by Yuksek and Simian Mobile Disco’s “I Believe.”
4. What was the first LP or CD you bought? The first album that I picked out on my own was Shaun Cassidy’s second studio album Born Late. I was kind of obsessed with Shaun Cassidy in elementary school. I swooned over him as little brother Joe in The Hardy Boys. I remember bringing the album to my 3rd-grade class’s show and tell. I sat up front and held the album cover open while the teacher played the record for the class. I couldn’t have been prouder.
5. What hobbies and interests do you have outside of music? I love hiking and snowshoeing, which I get to do a lot of living in Orland. Besides conveniently living very close to the station, I also live very close to the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust trail system and a short drive from Acadia National Park. I love nature photography, and I take a lot of photos on my hikes. I have two rescue dogs who are my hiking partners and frequent subjects of my photography. This doesn't mean I'm especially outdoorsy. I'm not the person you want with you on a mountaineering expedition.  I wouldn't last a hot minute. I have a romantic notion of nature and am fascinated with natural history and anthropology. I’m a voracious reader, and I love to browse the library or used bookstores on Saturdays. I love all things vintage, so flea markets and antiquing are fun for me too. I value learning new things. I’ve dabbled in acting and working with clay, and I’ve continued to take writing classes over the years.
6. If you could hang out with anyone, alive or dead, who would you pick and why? I would love to meet Gary Numan, who is one of the pioneers of electronic music. I’ve seen him in concert a couple of times, which was great fun. He smiled at me when I yelled for him to sing “Down in the Park.” I’d especially love it though if I could hang out with Josh Gates for an Expedition Unknown adventure or two. He’s kind of cute (and very married), true, but I’m also exceedingly envious of his job. Something that combines travel, adventure, history, archeology, and anthropology? Sign me up! Just don’t sign me up for a spelunking adventure because the movie The Descent scarred me for life.
7. If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why? I would want to be an owl. Owls symbolize intuition and have highly evolved senses - seeing what other can’t. They seem wise and cerebral, but they are also stealthy and can use those talons pretty effectively when they need to.
8. Favorite food? I could probably live a long, long time on pizza and cheesecake. I won’t. But I could.
9. Favorite book? Honestly, I could probably expound more on books than on music. Music I like specifically. Books I like generally. Though I’ve come to prefer reading nonfiction. I think everyone has a story to tell, and real life is often more interesting than fiction. Devil in the White City is a great example of compelling historical nonfiction. I read a lot of adventure books where people overcome – or don’t – seemingly insurmountable obstacles like Touching the Void, Into Thin Air and Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. I love satirical memoirists like Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris too. Laugh out loud hysterical!
10. Favorite movie? Henry and June, 1984, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Little Children, The Shining, and Out of the Blue.
11. If you could have any super power, what would it be? To know the unknowable and solve life’s mysteries. Like where did the settlers from the Roanoke Colony go? What happened to Amelia Earhart? What’s up with the Bermuda Triangle? That kind of omniscient knowing.
12. If you could visit any place in the world, where would it be? New Zealand is at the very top of my bucket list. Amazing flora and fauna sans large land predators or snakes. Perfect! Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Everest, was a Kiwi!
13. What would people be surprised to know about you? I have two teenage sons who are amazing. They spend their school year in Massachusetts. They’ve co hosted The Knix Mix a few times. Keston, my youngest, has a boy band aesthetic, plays piano and prefers dance pop. Keegan, my oldest, looks like he could have been a Seattle rocker circa 1990, plays guitar and is into progressive rock.  They both love WERU but neither are into electronic music, and they are spectacularly unimpressed that their mom has a radio show.
14. What three words would best describe you? Complicated, introspective, sentimental.
15. What three words would your friends use to describe you? Honest, loyal, intelligent.