Jean-Michel Jarre "Planet Jarre: 50 Years of Music (2CD Deluxe Edition, EU, Columbia, 19075833792)"

Planet Jarre: 50 Years of Music is a compilation album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released on 14 September 2018 to commemorate Jarre's 50 years in the music business.

A total of forty-one tracks were chosen by Jarre himself for inclusion, among them two new songs ("Herbalizer" and "Coachella Opening"). Jarre remastered, and in some cases "retouched", the tracks himself. During the process, he decided that he had pursued four quite different styles of composition and therefore divided the project into four "universes" - "Soundscapes", "Themes", "Sequences" and "Explorations and Early Works”. Some tracks were released in 5.1 surround sound.

Jarre's new-mix "retouched" versions for the album comprised Chronologie Parts 1 and 4, Oxygène Parts 2, 8 and 20, Équinoxe Parts 4 and 7, "Bells" and "Fourth Rendez-Vous"; as well as edits of the 2004 AERO version of "Last Rendez-vous" and the intro section of "Ethnicolor", a three-minute "Waiting for Cousteau" excerpt, and the title track from 1988’s Revolutions. (The latter was actually "Revolution, Revolutions", the title track from the 1991 Revolutions reissue, which had removed Kudsi Erguner’s sampled ney flute part and substituted an Arabian singer and orchestra.)

Two fuller 2018 remixes were also presented. 1984’s "Zoolookologie" appeared in a new trance-inspired version, and there was a reworking of the 1982 live version of "Magnetic Fields Part 2" from Les Concerts en Chine (with crowd noise removed and new synth overdubs added).

The "Explorations and Early Works" section of the album contained two previously unavailable rare or unreleased tracks. One was "Aor Bleu" (part of a suite of compositions Jarre had developed while studying musique concrete with Pierre Schaeffer at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in the 1960s, and which he’d previously revisited as part of a masterclass in Bourges during 2002). The other was one of the pieces from the super-rare Musique pour Supermarché album, 1982’s single-copy art/collectable-commerce experiment. Although the latter track was billed as a demo, it was later identified as "Part 1" from the album.

All of the other rare tracks had been released seven years earlier on the Essentials & Rarities compilation. These comprised three more GRM-era pieces ("Happiness is a Sad Song" - originally produced for "Les Fêtes de la Jeunesse" in Reims in 1968 - and both sides of Jarre’s 1971 debut single "La Cage/Erosmachine"), two tracks from 1973’s Les Granges Brulees, and "Hypnose" (actually "Hypnose (Partie 2) Instrumental", the Jarre-written-and-performed b-side of a 1973 Dominique Webb synthpop single).

The compilation's release was accompanied by the announcement of Équinoxe Infinity, a 40th anniversary sequel to his 1978 album Équinoxe, due for release on November 16, 2018.

Track listing
Soundscapes

1. Oxygène, Pt. 1 (7:39)[10]
2. Oxygène, Pt. 19 (5:01)
3. First Rendez-Vous (2:55) (remastered)
4. Millions of Stars (5:39)
5. Chronology, Pt. 1 (3:23) (new "retouched" mix/edit of second movement)
6. Oxygène, Pt. 20 (5:30) (new "retouched" mix/edit, without intro
7. Équinoxe, Pt. 2 (5:01)
8. Waiting for Cousteau (3:00) (three-minute excerpt - new "retouched" mix)
9. The Heart of Noise (The Origin) (2:36)

Themes

1. Industrial Revolution, Pt. 2 (2:22) (remastered)
2. Oxygène, Pt. 4 (3:46)
3. Équinoxe, Pt. 5 (3:45)
4. Oxygène, Pt. 2 (5:25) (new "retouched" mix)
5. Zoolookologie (3:44) (new 2018 remix/reimagining)
6. Bells (2:05) (new "retouched" mix)
7. Équinoxe, Pt. 4 (5:32) (new "retouched" mix)
8. Magnetic Fields, Pt. 2 (3:58) (remix of Les Concerts en Chine live version with new studio overdubs)
9. Second Rendez-Vous (Laser Harp) (2:20)
10. Fourth Rendez-Vous (4:09) (remastered, new mix)
11. Chronology, Pt. 4 (4:08) (remastered, new mix)

Sequences

1. Coachella Opening (3:58) (later released as "The Opening (Movement 8)" on Equinoxe Infinity)
2. Arpegiator (6:15)
3. Automatic, Pt. 1 (2:58) (collaboration with Vince Clarke)
4. Exit (5:45) (collaboration with Edward Snowden)
5. Équinoxe, Pt. 7 (3:35) (new "retouched" mix)
6. Oxygène, Pt. 8 (5:24) (new 2018 remix/reimagining)
7. Stardust (4:37) (collaboration with Armin van Buuren)
8. Herbalizer (3:26) (new previously unreleased track)
9. Revolutions (3:23) (mislabelled – actually new "retouched" mix of "Revolution, Revolutions", title track from 1991 reissue of Revolutions album)

Explorations and Early works

1. Ethnicolor (3:30) (new "retouched" mix/edit of introduction)
2. Souvenir of China (Live) (4:00)
3. Blah Blah Cafe (3:22) (remastered)
4. Music for Supermarkets (Demo Excerpt) (2:04) (mislabelled – actually "Music for Supermarkets Part 1")
5. Roseland (Le pays de rose) (2:03)
6. La Cage (3:09)
7. Erosmachine (2:59)
8. Hypnose (3:27) (actually "Hypnose (Partie 2) Instrumental", b-side of 1973 Dominique Webb single)
9. La Chanson des Granges Brûlées (2:45)
10. Happiness Is a Sad Song (5:51)
11. Aor Bleu (3:09)
12. Last Rendez-Vous (4:08) (new "retouched" mix/edit of 2004 AERO version)

5.1 Tracks

1. Circus
2. Équinoxe 2
3. Équinoxe 5
4. Exit
5. Oxygène 15
6. Oxygène 17
7. Oxygène 2
8. Stardust
9. Switched on Leon
10. Opening
11. Souvenir of China
12. Zoolookologie

Deluxe edition featuring all 41 Tracks on 2 CD in a 6-page digipak including a 24 page full color booklet.

Kraftwerk "The Mix (USA, Elektra Records, 9 60869-2)"

The Mix is a 1991 remix album by Kraftwerk. It featured re-recorded and in some cases re-arranged versions of a selection of songs which had originally appeared on the albums Autobahn through Electric Café. Hütter stated in interviews that he regarded The Mix as a type of live album, as it captured the results of the band's continual digital improvisations in their Kling Klang studio. The band had made a return to the stage in 1990, after a nine-year hiatus from touring, and since then the band's live setlist has used arrangements drawn from The Mix rather than the original recordings.

Stated reasons from the group explaining the release include:

1-The group didn't want to release a traditional "Greatest Hits" or "Best of" collection.

2-At the time, the band were in the process of reconfiguring their Kling Klang studio from analog to digital recording technology; integrating MIDI into their setup and creating sound archives from their original master tapes that were stored onto computers. This proved to be an ongoing task, as new upgrades and equipment were continually made available in the years following the album project.

3-Despite no new, original recorded material or live tours outside of Europe, Ralf Hütter did not want Kraftwerk to appear defunct to the public.

The album met with a rather mixed reception on its release. Many were disappointed at the lack of new compositions and, moreover, the production values of the re-recorded tracks did not strike many listeners as particularly cutting edge, something which Kraftwerk had previously been renowned for. The Mix was created entirely digitally, albeit during a period when the technology had yet to reach its maturity, and thus featured a sound which many listeners tend to find somewhat "sterile" compared to the analogue electronics employed on most of Kraftwerk's previous recordings of these songs.

The album sleeve was somewhat obtuse in the information it offered. Production is credited to Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, and Fritz Hilpert, the latter of whom had replaced percussionist and stage set designer Wolfgang Flür after Flür left the group in 1987. Karl Bartos also left the band in 1991 and was replaced by Fernando Abrantes. Bartos claimed in later interviews that much of his programming work was still featured on The Mix, uncredited.

A newly remastered edition of the album was released by EMI Records, Mute Records, and Astralwerks Records on CD, digital download, and heavyweight vinyl in October/November 2009. Because of licensing restrictions imposed by Warner Music Group, this version has only been made available in the US and Canada as a part of The Catalogue box set.

Track listing

1. "The Robots" ("Die Roboter") Ralf Hütter/Florian Schneider/Karl Bartos   8:56
2. "Computer Love" ("Computerliebe") Hütter/Bartos/Emil Schult   6:35
3. "Pocket Calculator" ("Taschenrechner") Hütter/Bartos/Schult   4:32
4. "Dentaku" (Japanese: "Calculator")   Hütter/Bartos/Schult   3:27
5. "Autobahn"  Hütter/Schneider/Schult   9:27
6. "Radioactivity" ("Radioaktivität")  Hütter/Schneider/Schult   6:53
7. "Trans-Europe Express" ("Trans Europa Express") Hütter/Schult   3:20
8. "Abzug"    Hütter   2:18
9. "Metal on Metal" ("Metall auf Metall") Hütter    4:58
10. "Home Computer" ("Heimcomputer") Hütter/Schneider/Bartos   8:02
11. "Music Non Stop" ("Musik Non-Stop") Hütter/Schneider/Bartos   6:38

Total length: 65:15

• "Home Computer" also includes elements from "It's More Fun to Compute"
• "Music Non Stop" also includes elements from "Boing Boom Tschak" and "Techno Pop"

The original 1991 liner notes credit Hütter, Schneider and Hilpert simply with "Music Data Mix", while the 2009 remaster release gives more detailed credits for Hütter and Schneider. Abrantes, while uncredited in the liner notes, appeared in the artwork and other promotional material. Several other individuals are credited with "hardware" and "software", by last name only.

Recording information:

Ralf Hütter – album concept, production, original artwork reconstruction

Florian Schneider – album concept, production

Günter Frohling – black and white photography

Peter Boettcher – color photography

Johann Zambryski – original artwork reconstruction