Jean Michel Jarre
Les Concerts en Chine

The Concerts in China is one of those albums that has never managed to get everyone to agree. Too engineered to be a traditional live record, too loaded with extra-musical meanings to be listened to lightly. And yet, it’s one of those works I keep defending without too many hesitations.

It's true: this isn't a “pure” live recording. Jarre’s Chinese concerts were technically complicated, and the album that resulted is partly reworked in the studio. But Jarre has never hidden this fact, nor has he ever tried to sell spontaneity when there was none. The Concerts in China is a considered, mediated, and controlled live album, and it works precisely because it fully embraces this nature.

The context is well known: a China timidly opening itself to the West, electronic music that lacks lyrics and is therefore perceived as “neutral”, the possibility of a cultural opening without sudden shocks. All of this weighs on the album, but it doesn’t empty it out. On the contrary, it gives it a distinct tension, a sense of otherness that is also reflected in the music.

The setlist is meaningful. Oxygène is played during the concerts, but left off the album, which instead focuses on Équinoxe and above all on Magnetic Fields, allowing space for variations, extensions, and less rigid moments compared to the studio versions. It’s a choice that makes the record less celebratory and more consistent.

The new tracks are among the project’s best offerings. Arpégiateur è un pezzo che spacca il sequencer, direct and hypnotic, while Orient Express and Souvenir of China add movement and melancholy without weighing down the flow. Even Fishing Junks at Sunset, with the Beijing Orchestra, avoids the postcard effect and remains surprisingly restrained. Overall, despite the length, the album flows naturally, thanks to careful work on transitions and atmosphere. It’s not an album that aims for immediate impact, but rather for a slow and continuous build-up.

The Concerts in China remains a much-discussed album, and it will probably continue to be.
Controversial album, for me a masterpiece.