LES CHANTS MAGNÉTIQUES [AKA: MAGNETIC FIELDS]

On Magnetic Fields, Jean Michel Jarre updates his sound to incorporate the latest new synthesisers and techniques, but adapts this to the general compositional approach he had followed since Oxygene. (Part 5 of the album, for instance, is essentially a somewhat cheesier version of the sort of "easy listening outro" he'd tacked onto the end of both Oxygene and Equinoxe.) As such, it forms the end of a trilogy of works which straddle the last days of the analogue synthesiser era and the dawn of the digital synthesiser era; precisely because of this, it's of interest to anyone with an appreciation of the history of electronic music, and it helps that it's a highly enjoyable album in its own right. I think on balance Equinoxe is the best of the trilogy, but I'd certainly recommend this to anyone who liked the previous two albums.