JEAN MICHEL JARRE – MAGNETIC FIELDS LP – Nr MINT UK 1981 PROG ELECTRONICA

Jean Michel Jarre – Magnetic Fields
(Polydor Records  1981  POLS1033)
Matrix No’s: A2/B2 – UK Pressing

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition

Sleeve & Inner Sleeve in  Nr MINT condition

Jean-Michel André Jarre (born 24 August 1948) is a French composer, performer, and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient, and new-age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.

Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents, and trained on the piano. From an early age, he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including those of street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages. He played guitar in a band, but his musical style was perhaps most heavily influenced by Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène. Recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album sold an estimated 12 million copies. Oxygène was followed in 1978 by Équinoxe, and in 1979, Jarre performed to a record-breaking audience of more than a million people at the Place de la Concorde, a record he has since broken three times. More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his future performances around the world. Several of his albums have been released to coincide with large-scale outdoor events, and he is now perhaps as well known as a performer as he is as a musician.

As of 2004, Jarre had sold an estimated 80 million albums. He was the first Western musician officially invited to perform in the People’s Republic of China, and holds the world record for the largest-ever audience at an outdoor event.

Magnetic Fields (French title: Les Chants Magnétiques) is the third mainstream album by Jean Michel Jarre (his fifth album in all), released on Disques Dreyfus in 1981. The album was one of the first records to use sampling as a musical element and represents a departure from the sound of Jarre’s previous efforts, although his distinct style is instantly recognizable throughout the duration of the album. For this album Jarre was partly inspired by the works of Andy Warhol and a fascination with the reproducibility of digital sound.

The long first track consists of three distinct movements, the slower second movement being heavily laden with sample work, foreshadowing the sound of Jarre’s 1984 album Zoolook.

The album reached #6 in the UK charts and #98 in the U.S. charts.

The album has official titles in both French and English. The French title, Les Chants Magnétiques is a play on words. Literally translated into English this means “Magnetic Songs” or “Magnetic Singing”. Spoken aloud however, it sounds as “Les Champs Magnétiques” (literally: “Magnetic Fields”), due to the French words chants (songs or singing) and champs (fields) being homophones. As this is not the case in English, such word play could not have survived translation, and the more straightforward title “Magnetic Fields” was chosen instead. In the caption for picture 5 on the album’s inner sleeve, the word “champs” in “champs magnétiques” is crossed out and the word “chants” is written above it.

Track listing

Side 1

1. “Magnetic Fields Part 1” – 17:57

Side 2

2. “Magnetic Fields Part 2” – 3:59
3. “Magnetic Fields Part 3” – 4:15
4. “Magnetic Fields Part 4” – 6:18
5. “Magnetic Fields Part 5 (The Last Rumba)” – 3:30

Equipment