Customer Reviews

Equinoxe

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Who has made the best synth album ever? Well, some would say Schulze, some would say Kraftwerk, some Tangerine Dream and some Jean Michel Jarre. I guess that the question can never be answered - it's a matter of taste really. One thing is for sure though. When it comes to the ability of making atmospheric soundscapes and cathcy themes, Jarre beats them all. Equinoxe was released back in 1978 and synth albums from that period often sound outdated because of the progress with computers and synths in general, but Equinoxe will never become outdated. Jarre has a unique eye for detail and even though I've listened to this album hundreds of times I still find new things in the music that I haven't heard before. The album is complete, meaning that it never loses the atmospheric feel. The music isn't just in the room when you listen to it - it surrounds and embraces the room. Many have tried to recreate the feel of this album and all of them have failed miserably, no one has ever come close - except for Jarres own Oxygene. The "hit" songs of this album would be Equinoxe 4,5 and 7. To me there can be no doubt. This is the best album ever and you owe it to yourself to listen to it. If you don't belive me just read the rest of the reviews.

Equinoxe, by Jean Michel Jarre, in my opinion is the greatest electronic music CD of all time. Jarre's masterpiece flows from the opening track Equinoxe 1 to the finale Equinoxe 8. It was created in the days before CD's so there is the break for both sides of the original vinyl and cassette recording. Otherwise I am sure Mr. Jarre would have made this one seamless piece of extra-ordinary creative music.

And yet the break enables one to get one's breath as Equinoxe 5 begins an everflowing journey of sound and sonics. Once into the music, you cannot escape the voyage to the inner recesses of your mind.

I have heard thousands of electronic Cd's in my time, and some have maybe more melodic, more evocative tracks. but none, and I reiterate, none flows from start to finish like Equinoxe. In fact as host and producer of the Nightflight a 2 hour radio show devoted to this genre, Equinoxe, was named the first Nightflight Hall of Fame Award in 1997.

Good Listening

Excellent space music. The man really made this music accesible to the masses and we should recognize that to him. He did not invent electronic music as a lot of people think. To prove my point by 1976 Claus Schulze had already released: Irrlicht, Cyborg, Blackdance,Picture Music, Timewind and Tangerine Dream had already released: Electronic Meditation, Alpha Centauri, Zeit, Atem , Phaedra, Rubycon, Ricochet.Listeners that like the style of Equinoxe should also listen to those. Claus Schulze's "X" is also very close to this one along with Vangelis' Albedo and Spiral. I warn you that you will be surprised. I was. I thought that Jarre was the beginning and end of electronic music. Not true at all.

In Oxygene and Equinoxe we find tremendous influences from Schulze's Picture Music and even more from Tangerine Dream's Phaedra and Rubycon. It is very interesting to explore how different ideas and sounds evolved in the cosmic music scene throughout the 70's.

All in all the music is groundbreaking, I think that Jarre really took the music one step further than the people I mentioned already. His sounds are more care free more ethereal and above all more TRANSPARENT.

Schulzes biosphere evolves in the wastelands of an unfriendly planet. Jarre's Equinoxe is the crystal clear water of a new promising world. Its really sad that Jarre's experiment did not last beyond his first 3 albums.

Equinoxe and Oxygene should belong to the collections of all serious listeners of electronic music. Great material.

I can still remember the first time I heard this album - I was simply blown away! I guess I was about 13 years old, and an older dude in my class listened to Jarre on his walkman. You could hear the bleeps and bloops oozing from his headphone from miles away!

I bought the album on vinyl and listened to it until the needle had to be replaced. And once I got the album on CD years later, I was amazed how clear the sound was...

This was the album that introduced me to Jarre's music, and that has been my favorite Jarre-album ever since. Most people like Oxygene best, but I like this one. I like listening to it in a completely dark room, with headphones on. I imagine that I'm somewhere in a kind of magical place, witnessing the sunrise. I can't help it, the music is capturing. And I always feel sad when the last song on the album starts...

If you aren't familiar with Jarre's music, start with this record, or with Oxygene - and then move on through Jarre's other albums, like a journey through the musical universe of Jean Michel Jarre.

Whereas most people cite Oxygene as Jarre's best or best-known album that transformed electronic music, Equinoxe is the TRUE masterpiece. It has a distinctly ambient, etheral, watery quality to it.

Parts 6 and 7 are forerunners of modern trance music whereas parts 1, 2, and 3 are extremely ambient and gooey. Parts 4 and 5 are the best known and typical Jarre anthems. If you buy one Jarre album it should be this! Sound quality is also top notch.

Equinoxe is absolutely the best work by Mr. Jarre. I had heard parts of it, and then a friend told me he had witnessed the debut concert in Paris, and played the entire cassette. That afternoon I bought it on vinyl. When CD's came out, this album was the reason I bought a player. Mr. Jarre has made many magnificent pieces since then, but I believe this is still his finest hour. Equinoxe 5 is the highlight of this suite, coming as it does where you would flip the record or cassette, roaring at you with the sound of the second thunderclap. Any electronic music buff must have this piece in his collectoin!

I've been a follower of Jean-Michel Jarre for many years, and even though Jarre has many followers around the world 90% of them will say that Equinoxe is the best Jarre album (possibly the best album ever). All you need to do is read the rest of the reviews and you're convinced. There's no need for me to go into detail, it's already done! One warning though! If you buy this album, the rest of your synth albums will sound like cheap amateur recordings

Of all the Electronic Music from that '70 period and leading up
to now, Jarre's stands the test of time. His orchestral approach to sounds and instruments, be they synthesized or sampled distinguishes him from most of yesterday's and today's brass.

How many trance, dance, techno... songs have we all heard that begin the same, have the same damn drum arrangement and even same
string/pad chord work, that's because today's synth nerds all need 200 synths just to make a simple bass line - with no musical theory knowledge, where as look at Jarre. He had around 8 synths and made the masterpieces that is Oxygene! Even his fellow musicians of the time Vangelis, Klaus Schulze all pioneered the way electronic music was made and communicated to the people, by using the minimum amount of instruments and maximum amount of creativity and knowledge!

Equinoxe to this day sounds fresh just as it did in 1978, one of the cool things Jarre does on both Oxygene and Equinoxe is treat
his left and right channels seperately, infact if you listen especially to Oxygene 2 and Equinoxe 4 there's difference between what you hear on the left channel compared to the right - which is the one that contains all the echo's and effects.
This makes his music sound fresh(As if it's been recorded today)
and great on stereo equipment.

Long Live Jarre.

Thanks for bringing to the world accesible ambience music fused with classy pop tunes and reaching 'extravaganza of a life time' levels at concerts - that have yet to be reached by others.

If I lost my entire CD collection tommorow (and it's quite large) first thing on my mind would be to replace Equinox by JMJ.
I have this theory that the second attempt or project is very often the best - eg Mad Max - the second and the best of that film trilogy.
Well Its certainly true of Jean Michel Jarre. Oxygene came in 76 and was a breath of fresh air that we still remember fondly. By the time he was making Equinox in 78 he had learned all the lessons and was still so good musically, so intense and energetic in terms of creativity. This work has imortalised him.

My first hearing of this was somewhere unusal - Equinox Part 1 was used on Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV program to depict a last perfect day on Earth when the Sun swells into a red giant and all our oceans dry up signalling the natural end of the world. Well this is the most perfect depiction I've ever seen put to music. It filled me with wonder.

That's exactly what the opening sequence in Equinox always does - profound and powerfull. You can't ignore it. Hair-raising.Yet also beautiful and earthly like the whole of Equinox - right through to the the end which feels like the end of an unforgettable day, tearful and nostalgic. Equinox involkes the seasons, life on Earth in all it's festivities but not merily an observation of nature. This is through the mind of a human and conveys the awarness of the beautiful Earth around him, a theme to which Jean Michel would return.
I recall in 1981 cycling to school with My Sony walkman playing Equinox while all around me was the spring morning and the fog layers over the marshland in the west of Ireland. This is what Equinox is about. Sunrise and sunsets.Nothing about electronics. Go ask JMJ.
I always imagine that Peer Gynt himself witnissing the sun rise over the Sahera would have taken his hat off to Equinox.

They say in marketing "never change a classic". Well to top it all off we have a wonderful album cover which I hope will never be tampered with by the record company.

When you get this CD, turn off the lights, close your eyes and open up your imagination. Prepare for a journey into a world of harmony and universal beauty, where there are no time or space constraints. With this music, you don't need LSD to float freely into the ether...