Jean Michel Jarre — Sessions 2000. How to force someone to record an album

Just like with Music for Supermarkets, Jarre’s little-known album Sessions 2000 is interesting not so much because of the music (the author himself says that he likes only a couple of moments on the disc), but because of its history. Jarre was 100% forced to create it. A little context: in 1997, Jean-Michel released the sequel to his classic album Oxygène and, thus, closed his twenty-year era as a classic electronic musician. Having finished a tour in support of a record with remixes from young electronic artists, the 50-year-old Jarre was going to enter the new millennium as an electronic experimenter. He was inspired by the capabilities of digital audio workstations that fit an entire studio in one laptop.

Jean Michel Jarre, Joachim Garraud

To embody his ideas, Jean-Michel invited Joachim Garraud (he worked on the sound design of the album with a club version of Oxygène in 1998, and in the noughties he brought David Guetta to stardom). Joachim refreshes Jarre’s electronic sound and together for a year and a half they were writing Métamorphoses, a genuine pop album with real songs and a lot of guest musicians. Jarre called the record ‘pop music of the future’ and partially presented it at a big New Year’s concert at the foot of the Egyptian pyramids.