In 2022 Jean-Michel Jarre released his 22nd and most recent album, Oxymore. Explaining that stereo wasn’t a natural form of sound, he produced the record in several more recent audio formats, and created a VR live show based in his imaginary city of Oxyville. That year – before AI had become the industry’s hot topic – he told Prog where he believed music was going next, and relished the chance of taking part in another great disruption.
I’ve been quite involved with VR and immersive worlds for a while. I think the Covid period played a role of an accelerator in our relationship with digital worlds and interfaces.
Everyone is talking about immersive worlds visually; no one is talking about immersive worlds of sound. The visual field for a human being is 140 degrees – but the audio field is 360 degrees.
And really, we don’t care about technology; only the result matters. Is it working? Is it creating feeling or emotions or not? This new approach is sending us back to a very natural way of listening to sounds in everyday life.
I wanted to create a live event for Oxymore, and in VR we can explore the visual possibilities. I thought it would be fun to create a music city: the city of Oxyville, somewhere between Metropolis and Sin City, with buildings made from the broken parts of old synths and old tape recorders.
Then I’ll play live in the city. Each track will be dedicated to a district, and at the end of each track you’ll be teleported to another district.
The whole thing is based on spatial audio and surround sound, because I’m convinced that’s the way we’re going to listen to music in the very near future.
People have electric cars, which are going to eventually become pocket auditoriums. People have incredible soundbars with their TV sets. We’re going to have a much more 3D relationship with the music.
If I play live in reality, I want to do it without any visuals and go back to what the music is about: closing your eyes, listening and having a real trip and a real music experience. But I want to keep the visual experience within VR.
It will make sense to young people, I think. But this idea of imaginary worlds is not new. Our first virtual world is a book – it could be Dickens or Harry Potter, and you’re imagining the faces of the characters. You’re being an observer within the story, in a sense. We’re just going one step further.
I think young musicians are very lucky to live in this world of ideas and disruption. We always have a very dark vision and attitude about the future. We always think tomorrow is going to be worse than today. But if all those previous futures were so bad, we wouldn’t be here to talk to each other!
I’ve been lucky to live through three moments of disruption. The first was when I started, at the beginning of electronic music. The second was the digital era, with the rise of computers, and the third is this revolution of immersive worlds and the metaverse, and the fact that we can again push the boundaries of creativity.
This project makes me feel like a beginner – I’m opening doors on something new.
