Magnetic Fields

Les Chants Magnétiques — Magnetic Fields in English — is where Jarre's sound turns. After the air of Oxygène and the water of Équinoxe, this record is harder, colder and more electric, with rhythm pushed to the front.

The instrument that made the difference was the Fairlight CMI, which Jarre was among the first musicians anywhere to use, alongside Peter Gabriel. Fragments of voice and existing material appear as musical elements in their own right — most audibly in the long opening piece, whose slower middle section is thick with sample work and points directly at Zoolook three years later.

The thinking behind it came partly from Andy Warhol, and from a fascination with the reproducibility of digital sound: the idea that a copy is not a lesser thing than an original. In that sense the album is a tribute to the machines themselves — the equipment isn't a means to a sound here, it's the subject.

The French title is a pun that doesn't survive translation. Chants (songs) and champs (fields) sound alike, so spoken aloud the title reads as both "magnetic songs" and "magnetic fields" — the latter also the title of a 1920 surrealist work by Breton and Soupault.

Released 20 May 1981 on Disques Dreyfus, recorded at Croissy Studio.