Jean Michel Jarre — Geometry of Love. A brief history of the album for one club

And here is another example of an atypical Jarre: without the usual gurgling and howling, but in the spirit of 2000s lounge. Geometry of Love was quietly released during the troubled time when Jean Michel left the former label, where he had been for almost 25 years. Many reviewers wrote that Geometry of Love was very similar in terms of mood to Sessions 2000. I will only agree that Geometry of Love continued the experimental mood of the 50-year-old Jarre, who, at the millennium, broke with the past and dug into exploring the possibilities of digital synthesisers. And content-wise, Geometry of Love is more interesting than the electronic jazzy Sessions released only to fulfil the contract.

Here is how it happened: at the beginning of the noughties, Jean-Roch, the owner of a very fashionable club for friends only, offered the godfather of electronic music the opportunity to record background content for the visitors and walls of the elite establishment. Jarre agreed (custom records weren’t new to him: in 2001 he worked on the Interior Music soundtrack for the Bang & Olufsen high-end stereo system salons), so in 2003, he recorded a sensual and idle instrumental album with track titles like Soul intrusion and Velvet road for rich Parisian kids.

The album was presented in the middle of the week, on July 10, in the very centre of Paris, the Champs-Élysées. The commissioner came to the VIP Room to accept the music for his establishment. The incoming visitors all held invitations in their hands. On the back, there was a programme in the shape of a martini glass; on the front, covered with a mosaic, the most intimate part of Isabelle Adjani, the composer’s fiancée at that time. The same picture became the cover of the album. (The track Near Djaina contains a hidden anagram Near Adjani. The French press greedily relished the details of the romance of two worldly persons, a famous high-ranking actress and a renowned high-ranking musician. No less greedily did the press chew over their breakup in 2004.)

The presentation of Geometry of Love coincided with the end of Paris Fashion Week, so the club was full of tall models, whose bodies, falling into the lenses of the team of local designer Ito Morabito, were projected on the walls as a mosaic. Everyone who wanted to take the music with them bought a copy of Geometry of Love in the cloakroom of the club for 30 euros. Jarre printed two thousand exclusive copies for them. The album appeared on the shelves by September 2003.