Art

By: Clara (9)

Review: Amazônia by Jean-Michel Jarre

By: Ignacio (12)

I would say Amazônia has got to be one of the most vivid, expressive forms of electronic composing I’ve listened to in a while. There’s this mix of life, raw, unadulterated life; and a sort of nomadic flow that Jarre gave to this score. Amazônia is a symphonic score Jean-Michel Jarre made last year in order to accompany Sebastian Salgado’s exhibition of the Brazilian Amazon. He, however, did not tackle the ambient of it, or any sort of culture or nature, for that matter. He simply did not tackle at all. He instead looked at a boundless source of a primordial connection to nature (and humanity, by extension), and he chose to approach it slowly, and very respectfully. According to Jarre, he did not wish to make your average ambient music, so instead he created his own electronic and orchestral noises that would imitate “the timbre of natural sounds”. Thus, artificial art was mixed with real recordings from

the Ethnography Museum of Geneva to create Amazônia. The whole score has a strange, yet comforting entourage of almost guttural noises, which ever so breathe in and out. Rhythm is always there, which frankly will come off as a pleasant surprise to whoever’s listening to Amazônia. You can’t quite tell where each string of melodies and percussion comes in, and you can’t tell where they come out, either. However, Jarre’s excellent craftsmanship makes it so that every timbre contains an impressionist origin to it. It imitates voices, and old flutes, and the noises of raw natural elements like water, but there isn’t a style that you can exactly pinpoint, precisely given the fact that nothing in this score lasts. Sometimes the electronic parts of this just moan. They let out cries, and cracks, and crude attempts at being bigger, at evolving. Something always catches up to that, though, and it’s the fact that these are really spams of vivid emotion, like a precursor to a parade that never seems to arrive, and that’s what Jarre is trying to get us to. This whole phenomenon begins in Part 2. Part 1 is too short, it’s almost like a soft tryout for all these recurring elements. From Part 3 onwards, the score turns more melodic, and gets progressively grittier as the percussion becomes seemingly clad in metal as a more industry-like beat begins to play. It’s almost like Jarre is alluding to the small fragments of primal culture that stays even within urbanity. From this, a cycle of industry, silence, and the more faithful native sections begins. Synthetic horns blare in Part 5, as all of these parts come together into a blend of synthetic leads (melodies) with simple rhythms. What fascinates me about this is that the overly modern pieces do not detract from the ritualistic environment that has been created, and instead sustains it through, yet again, its element-imitating timbre.

Part 6 opens as a hazy drag with attack-filled synths, which prolong the start and rise in volume of the notes played. Around the halfway point, the storm comes through blaring synth horns at a very low tone, which inspires a muddled, yet life-giving event where the sky is clouded. The true rain then comes at the last fourth of this piece for a moment, as an actual rain recording. The status quo shifts towards Parts 7, 8, and 9, as they gain much more structure and accompaniment of other

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instruments. Jarre fans will be pleasantly surprised with the similarities these compositions share to his previous and more recognized works, such as Oxygen and Equinoxe. The “breathing” noise made by the synths is simply unmistakable, and so are their enveloping, gritless melodies. I feel like Jarre simply couldn’t avoid placing his Oxygene air noise in Part 9. It does fit the score’s whole ambience, too. That being said, this is mainly what I’d criticize about Amazonia. It’s the fact that Jean-Michel always begins to develop his compositions prior to Part 7 and beyond, but then it’s like he remembers that his whole score is inspired by cultures that do not make music nearly as developed as the artists in this time, so he stops developing those sections. Jarre is already able to create something that is simple, yet imitates the style of the Brazilian Amazon in a manner that is so genuine, he himself made electronic sounds that meld with real recordings as if they were part of nature itself. Then the last three parts come in, and suddenly they have actual overarching motifs and a structure. I am by no means saying they sound bad, I am simply saying that the score is not that consistent. As for the rest, the impressionist stance taken ends up being very successful, in my view.

By: Clara (9)