Équinoxe

When an idea came to him, Jarre put it down first on a small cassette recorder, an audio scratch pad. One of those tapes he meant to throw out. He did not think it was good enough. Michel Geiss persuaded him to keep it. That recording became "Équinoxe Part 7." At seven minutes twenty-four, it is the longest thing on the record.

Geiss was an electronics engineer who had started out in the telecoms department of a cable company, helping to develop some of the very first modems. In 1974 he gave a talk on the ARP 2600; Jarre was in the audience, and the two were soon working together. For about twenty years after that Geiss built machines for Jarre and shaped his sounds. Two of the machines he built are on this record.

Where it sits in the history of music

The road that led Jarre here is in Jean-Michel Jarre, where to start, and the record before this one is covered in the Oxygène piece. Jarre explained the difference himself. Oxygène was made with no concept in mind; Équinoxe set out to picture a single day. "I wanted to evoke the passing of the twenty-four hours of a day, each part of the album representing a different moment of the day and the night."

The room was the same, the private studio in his Paris apartment. The machines were not. The record was made on sixteen-track MCI tape. Jarre told Geiss he wished he had a sequencer built around a matrix, and Geiss built him the Matrisequencer 250, two rows of fifty notes, which became one of the main instruments on the record. The Rhythmicomputer that drives some of the beats was Geiss's as well. The 2014 remaster notes list sixteen pieces of equipment, seven more than the nine on Oxygène.

Tracklist

Parts 1 to 4 on side one, 5 to 8 on side two. 39:02 in all.

Three parts, up close

"Part 1" (2:23). Where the day begins. The main sound comes from the Eminent organ's SUST string setting, the same Eminent 310 that was run through a phaser on Oxygène. Hear it as the thread between the two records: the organ that carried the first one opens the morning of the second. It is only two minutes long, so listen for the seam where it hands over to what comes next.

"Part 5" (3:54). It opens side two and it was the single, reaching number 45 in Britain; it has been called "a synth-pop primer." It is the guide's first pick from this record. Listen with your feet here. If your body picks up the beat before you do, the slow day of side one has reached noon.

"Part 7" (7:24). The piece that nearly went in the bin. The guide's second pick, and the longest thing here. Listen knowing it began as a cassette sketch Jarre thought was not good enough. The way to hear it is to work out for yourself what caught Geiss's ear across those seven and a half minutes. In 1980 it was also released as a single, paired with "Part 8."

The rest of the record

"Part 4" (6:52) was a single in 1979, and from 1984 to 1991 it was the title music of Our World, a nature documentary series on Television New Zealand. The first ninety seconds or so of "Part 8" (5:02) are also known as "L'Orchestre sous la pluie," the orchestra in the rain. Water, rain, storm and thunder run through the record, and the weather was Geiss's work too. A record about a day needed weather.

How to listen

• Once, start to finish. Morning to night, a whole day in forty minutes.
• Then the way Jarre wanted. In his words: "I want people to use my record, to play it at different moments of the day and when they are in different moods." "Part 1" in the morning, "Part 5" at midday, "Part 8" at dusk.
• Loud. As the guide says, cut the bass on Jarre and half of it disappears.
• Count the weather. Keep track of the rain and the thunder, and the record starts to sound like a day.

What happened next

The British press was cold again. Davitt Sigerson of Melody Maker called it "as slushily, pseudo-galactically crass and vapid as last year's Oxygène," and took a swipe at the "artificial 'weather' effects to generate mood." He added: "There isn't even much that's danceable." Yet that same record's "Part 5" has been called a synth-pop primer.

After the release came a laser show and fireworks outside the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, with the album played at full volume over the public address, and a promotional tour of the United States in February 1979. Then, on 14 July 1979, a free concert on the Place de la Concorde in Paris drew more than a million people, at the time the largest crowd ever for an outdoor concert. Between 14 July and 31 August another 800,000 records were sold. Carl Sagan's Cosmos used "Part 1," "Part 3" and "Part 4." In 2018, forty years on, came a sequel, Equinoxe Infinity.

The one track to send a friend

Send "Équinoxe Part 7". Say in advance that it runs seven and a half minutes. Then add one line. Jarre thought this cassette sketch was not good enough and meant to throw it away; his collaborator Michel Geiss talked him into keeping it. The same man made the record's rain and thunder.

Where to get it

The 1978 French LP, 2344 120, is the face of this record. Polydor's international release came out in Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere. There is also a 2014 remaster.

AmazonJean-Michel Jarre Équinoxe on CD and vinyl.DiscogsEvery pressing of Équinoxe, from the 1978 French LP 2344 120.

At dusk a cassette someone meant to throw away turns into seven and a half minutes of music. Outside, Geiss's rain is falling.