French electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre announced his 22nd studio album «Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» one of his most ambitious projects to date, will be released on October 21st, 2022 via Sony Music.
«Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» is a musical journey where Pierre Henry’s sounds interact with Jarre’s new composition in a sonic game of mirrors, where the creator of Oxygene finds his inverted doppelganger in Oxymore, opening a vortex that sucks the listener into an anachronistic back-and-forth where analogue and digital find a common playground.
The project is inspired by French composer Pierre Henry and his movement ‘musique concrete’ (concrete music), a genre of music composition that utilises recorded sounds as raw material. The movement was first developed in the 1940s and went on to revolutionise the way music is produced. With «Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry», Jarre takes this concept and reinvents it with the tools of today.
The album has been conceived as an immersive work in one of the homes of musique concrete, Radio France’s ‘Maison de la Radio et de la Musique’ innovation studios (where Jarre first started experimenting with sounds at the start of his career) in a multi-channel and 3D binaural version. Multi-channel binaural sound will revolutionise how music is composed, mixed and produced, placing sounds and textures in space in 360 degrees, and can be easily experienced by any listeners with headphones. «Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» is the first commercial release of this stature which pushes the future of musical audio and sound to this new level.
«This is a real moment of disruption for audio and sound recording. «Oxymore — Homage To Pierre Henry» is an attempt to illustrate and explore these new ways of linking technology and music. Today we have technologies which allow us to explore composition in spatial audio and that opens a whole new experience for us musicians in the creative process. For the listener too, it offers the experience of a more physical and natural way of listening to sound and music. In real life, our audio field is 360 degrees. «Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» has been composed specifically with the spatial audio experience at heart, I even feel that the stereo mix is even wider itself, and that it has gained more space in the process. I’m convinced that this is how music will be composed and produced in the future. The emotion also for the listener is a huge next level jump, like when we moved from mono to stereo.»
Track «Brutalism» is out as first single and official video on August 26th. It's an unashamedly banging techno track that wouldn’t sound out of place at Berghain, the iconic Berlin club and the temple of the genre.
«That’s definitely a heavier track. I wanted to create an apocalyptic mood. Like a kind of big bang of Berlin techno, at the beginning when it was an explosion, that kind of feel, maybe due to the remains of the war.»
Each single taken from «Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» will later be accompanied by remixes or reworks by a mix of well-known and up-and-coming artists and producers. «Brutalism» will be reworked in collaboration with Deathpact due for release later this year. Further reworks of the song will be announced soon.
As part of the immersive project, Jarre will also launch OXYVILLE, a VR world which accompanies the album release, and also where he and his custom built avatar will perform the album live in VR.
«OXYVILLE will be a virtual music city, and in the future I wish to invite other artists to be a part of it, as well as hold masterclasses and other events. I want it to become a sandbox for new music experiences.»
«Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» has already been performed as a physical 360 degree spatial audio concert, presented as an exclusive world preview during the Hyper Weekend Festival, within the walls of Maison de la Radio in Paris in January earlier this year. The concert was also offered in social VR in real-time for 1000 people with 300 present in the room.
«Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» is available from October 21st and available to pre-order now. The album will be released as CD, Double Vinyl and digital in stereo, Binaural and Dolby Atmos. The physical product will have a code to access the highest quality binaural master as intended by Jean-Michel Jarre when producing the album.
Complete information about Jean-Michel Jarre «Oxymore - Homage To Pierre Henry» tracklist and formats - here.
You can see official Jean-Michel Jarre «Brutalism» video here.
Info taken from official Jean-Michel Jarre website.
