Rendez-Vous

Rendez-Vous is Jarre's space album, and it moves across more ground than that description suggests: sweeping contrapuntal passages, techno-pop with real hooks, stretches of quiet melancholy, and ambient jazz by the close.

That closing piece carries the album's weight. "Last Rendez-Vous", subtitled "Ron's Piece", was written for the astronaut Ron McNair to play on saxophone aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger — it would have been the first music performed and recorded in space, beamed into Jarre's Houston concert that April. McNair rehearsed it right up to the last moment. On 28 January 1986 the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after launch, killing the entire crew.

The record is dedicated to McNair and the six astronauts who died with him. In the sleeve note, Jarre asks that the memory of his friend — the astronaut and the artist — live on through the music. The saxophone part on the album is played by French jazz reedist Pierre Gossez.

Released in 1986 on Disques Dreyfus, recorded and mixed at Croissy studio.