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[sobtanian]

Jean-Michel Jarre's BIG MESS

First of all, Merry Christmas to you all and hopefully a Happy New Year.

It feels a little weird composing this post when the last blog I did ages ago was almost the exact opposite, but here we are.

A few weeks ago, Jarre announced that he was going to perform in The Hall of Mirrors at The Palace of Versailles. A Christmas Day special event where only a small audience could attend, but, more importantly, it was going to be a mixed live/VR event.

Unlike his previous three VR events (more info in the last blog if you're interested) which were recorded and then played back on demand when you joined, this was meant to be happening at the same time as the real thing. Jarre would be performing in the palace, wearing some AR headset that no one had heard of, hence enabling him to allegedly both see the real audience and what was going on in VR.

The VR aspect was to go live at the same time as the concert, using VRRoom's beta app. It is important to note here that VRRoom have been his VR partners since the beginning, but they didn't have their own app, they were piggybacking the performances on the well-established VRChat platform, something they managed to do extremely well by the third (Oxymore) VR event.

Obviously, none of this came to happen.

Just hours before the event, there was an announcement on Twitter (I'm not calling it X and that's a hill I will die on!) that the public access VR event was being delayed for 3 hours after the live show. The official excuse was to allow them to "ensure the highest quality production." The official TV broadcast and YouTube stream were scheduled for the same time also.

This immediately rang alarm bells. Wasn't this meant to be a hybrid live/VR event we could experience together? Maybe they delayed it because they wanted to record the VR part, tidy it up, and release a good version of it? Or was it that they just weren't ready for the whole thing?

It turned out to be the latter.

Come VR performance time, no one could actually join. If you were lucky enough to manage to login to the VRRoom servers, you were faced with a black message with a sand timer on it, telling you to click here to join. Join what? The void? If you were patient enough, you may have seen that black screen turn into a concert poster! Wow, progress! You clicked to download the "shared assets" to your headset, and once that happened you might have seen the same click here to join message.

You clicked and the screen faded to black and finally you were going somewhere. Back to where you started that is. No matter how many times you tried, you just ended up where you started. Nothing. If you made the mistake of quitting the app and trying again, you couldn't even login anymore.

Now, this wasn't just me, or some people, this was everyone who tried VR. I have searched multiple fan groups and pages to see if anyone, anyone, got in, and no one did. So much for "highest quality production."

30 minutes of this frustration was enough for me and the group of people I was chatting to. We quit the app, and decided to watch what was left of the TV stream from the live concert earlier in the day. The YouTube stream never materialised and hopefully never will.

We found ourselves watching what had to be some Black Mirror version of a Jarre concert.

There he was, in the middle of this hall with audiences in front and behind him. The footage was mainly a camera going round and round in circles, sometimes showing the (dimly lit) crowd, who didn't quite know whether to clap or dance or not, and then mixing into this awful VR version (rehearsal?) of the performance with a VR audience that was made up of black silhouettes of people. Not animated, not moving, nothing. Just black mannequins. It gave this very dystopian image of some mad man playing music to a bunch of dolls. This was obviously just a mix that someone quickly threw together to try and make the TV contractual obligation and hope no one notices.

Your fans are tech-savvy Mr Jarre, by definition we kinda are because you came along at a time when tech was blowing up and we grew up with it and your music hand in hand. We noticed.

Perhaps the most embarrassing of all however was his "live" performance. It's no secret that 99% of his concerts are playback, but then most electronic acts are. But most electronic acts have the dignity to acknowledge this and even play to its strength: Kraftwerk just stand behind desks pressing a button now and then, heck occasionally even replacing themselves with robots that just stand there while the music plays; The Chemical Brothers just go from twiddling one knob to another that may or may not make any changes to the track that's playing at the time. And that's OK, we're there for the music, not the craftsmanship.

Jarre seems to think that jumping around pretending to play notes is what people want to see, and maybe that might've worked if he was playing on the rooftops of Houston for example. But in such a small space, with cameras everywhere, what we got was an old man who was trying to act half his age, forgetting what he was meant to be doing and just jumping around from one keyboard to another. A tune would play and his fingers would be just hovering over some keys and not even moving, he would suddenly stop "playing" the main tune and start clapping or interacting with the crowd, or he'd spin around to face the crowd behind him, abandoning whatever keyboard he was pretending to play and the music somehow magically carried on. I was reminded of The Weeknd's excellent "Save Your Tears" music video that parodies artists younger than Jarre by fifty years. Click the scissors below to see what I mean:

The final insult to this injury was that he was doing all this while wearing that headset. To see what? I don't know. Definitely not the VR version of this big mess. Maybe he was watching The Weeknd's video on repeat and wondering how it all came down to this.

While I will forever be in awe and respectful of Jarre as a musician and artist, it is still very sad seeing him fall to such low ground after a career that literally took his music to outer space. I could not shake the feeling that Jarre's seventy five years have finally caught up with him, and no matter how eternally youthful he looks or wishes to be, time will always win in the end.

I Iove you monsieur Jean-Michel but perhaps it's now time to put your feet up and relax. Leave the miming to your grandchildren.

[sobtanian]

Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxymore

This weekend, Jean-Michel Jarre is performing a set of small concerts for the Hyper Weekend festival in France, and this includes a free VR experience called Oxymore, which I attended. Here's some impressions about that, and his VR work so far in general.

I am fortunate enough to have attended all 3 VR concerts so far using a VR headset connected to my PC, so getting the best experience possible.

While I loved Alone Together (for the music, I like that kind of stuff), the actual experience itself was clearly rushed (which it was), and also full of glitches/technical issues, but it was a sign of things to come.

Welcome To The Other Side was much better: it was obvious that a lot of time and money had gone into this one, especially the amazing Ubisoft rendition of The Notre Dame and the visual effects in general. Again, this was Dance Jarre, which I quite like but I know many don't.

Oxymore, however, was an entirely different thing. This was a carefully curated art show, rendered almost completely in black and white, with some very surreal moments. You were free to move around, but periodically got warped from one set scene to another. I won't spoil too much for those that are going to attend this weekend, but the photos above give you some idea about what to expect.

It was a lot more organised this time too. While I know that some fans had trouble even connecting (and that's the problem with all these VR things, you have to be quite technical to connect), VRRoom this time had it a lot more under control, including hosts that actually guided you through the experience if you wanted to.

I was surprised to see clips of the show in real life, where it was just him and the audience and that's it. On this occasion, the VR event was vastly superior.

It really needs to be experience using a VR headset if you have one, so you can be totally immersed in the show.

As for the music? Well I won't spoil that. Let me just say that this is Jarre doing Jarre, and on this occasion you can't accuse the man of being Dance DJ Jarre. It's amazing and I hope it gets released as an album soon.

Overall, this was the best experience out of the three VR shows he's done, and you can tell that both him, and the VRRoom team are getting more comfortable/better at this sort of thing. And while he looks into the future with more VR stuff, in Oxymore he's definitely looked into his rich musical past.

You won't be disappointed.

[sobtanian]

My Best Friend Sinclair

I first met my best friend Sinclair in 1983, when I was just 6 years old. It was one of those really cold and really dark days that seemed to be all what I remember from 1980s northern England. My dad had come home late, carrying with him a big polystyrene box with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k inside, along with an even bigger cardboard box with the "Spectrum Six Pack" budget games. He'd bought them for my brother who was 10 at the time. He'd been begging for it for ages.

I'll never forget that evening when they were trying to hook it up to our tiny TV. I watched in fascination as they fiddled with cables and tuning and got nowhere. All we saw was white noise. I got bored and started flicking through that glorious manual, and saw what was meant to be on the TV: the infamous white screen with (C) 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd at the bottom. It just wasn't going to happen.

Until it did.

That moment genuinely felt like a magic window had appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, out of all that noise, this picture came and with it those magic words at the bottom. They then hooked up the tape recorder my dad had bought also, and after a lot of fiddling, they figured out how to load a game from the tapes. Naturally, we started with Horace Goes Skiing.

I remember the anticipation of that long loading sequence with all its screeching and bleeping and lines moving about, and I also remember not quite believing that at the end of all this, a game was going to appear. In our tiny house. On our tiny TV.

But it did.

Suddenly, there was this almost manic screen flashing HORACE GOES SKIING, and soon after we were both just sat on the floor, jaws agape, trying to figure out how to get Horace to cross the road and back to hire his skis.

I instantly fell head over heels in love with this little black thing, with its rubber grey keys and rainbow logo in the corner and those bleeps and bloops, and all the magic that came within.

In 1986, we all went back to Iraq.

This came as quite a culture-shock for me. I was born in Manchester and had no memory of random visits to Iraq when younger. My only memories came from England. So when we went to Baghdad I had to get used to a lot of new things: the climate (very hot and dusty), the language (I spoke broken Arabic at best), and perhaps most of all, the war. Iraq in 1986 was six years into a bloody eight year war with Iran, under the iron rule of Saddam Hussein.

When you're a child, who ruled didn't really factor into your life, you didn't really understand why grownups had a problem with the regime. But when you're in school and the air raid sirens start screaming and you hear a big massive explosion, the war takes centre stage in your life, no matter how young.

There was an escape though.

Our little ZX Spectrum had made the journey to Iraq with us. Luckily, it had found a thriving scene of hobbyists and gamers.

This small, unassuming black rectangle was lovingly known as "Sinclair." On the hot playgrounds, you regularly heard things like "Do you have Sinclair?" or "Is that on Sinclair?" and so on. It was never called the Spectrum or anything else. Just Sinclair.

In our young-but-troubled world, Sinclair became another word for escape.

Just like that magical moment in England in 1983, the Sinclair became an actual window to escape through. An escape away from the heat, the dust, the sights, sounds, and stories of war, and into the many amazing worlds of those simple, yet spellbinding, games.

Sinclair made the unbearable, bearable.

I spent as much time as possible with it, glued to the TV and those clashing colours and bleeping sounds and spongy keys that came together to create something truly magical and unique. Something that transported me as far away as possible from the difficult and sometimes strange world outside. An escape that I shared with many other children in Iraq, an escape that brought us together and bonded us, that got us talking about things other than war and bombs and children being bombed in their playgrounds and young men dying in the war, all realities that we had to endure but couldn't understand nor process.

The recent news of Sir Clive Sinclair's death felt to me like my best friend had died. A friend who'd been through it all with me, who understood what I'd seen and lived through, and who didn't judge me for being nerdy, nor bully me for speaking broken Arabic, a friend who shared with me a passion to just stay inside and escape with books and games, instead of kicking a ball about in the dusty, broken streets of Baghdad.

You never knew me Sir Clive Sinclair, nor the thousands of Iraqi children who adored your small computer.

You gave us an escape, and you gave us hope.

You will forever be our best friend.

[sobtanian]

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre

Yesterday, Jean-Michel Jarre released his latest project, an iOS app by the name of EōN. Created in collaboration with music tech company BLEASS, and with Sony for the visuals, the app uses seven hours of music he record specially for it, and using the wizardy of algorithms it generates a piece of music that can go on indefinitely, in addition to some abstract accompanying visuals. Similar procedurally generated music has existed before, of course, Brian Eno's Generative Music projects long preceded EōN; and video games have been doing it for a very long time now.

Currently it's only available for iOS, but an Android version is promised for next year. The video and audio can be AirPlayed to other devices also thankfully.

I purchased the app yesterday and have had it running almost continuously in the car, at home, and walking the dog, so I feel comfortable doing this mini-review given the amount of time I've been listening.

First of all, the visuals. These are similar to any WinAmp visualiser you've seen from around 1998 or so. They're fun to look at for a while but they don't really add much in my opinion. I mostly have the music running the background while doing something else.

But onto the main bit, the music. Every time you start the app, you get an entirely different "album" than before. While it's all electronic obviously, he has recorded a huge amount of variations, sequences, chords, and melodies. Sometimes you're greeted with a dark, soundscape of shifting moods, other times with a foot-tapping melody and drums sequence, and everything in between. For long-time fans there's even some recognisable themes, in my time with the app I've heard shades of Oxygene, Equinoxe, and Zoolook.

However, you're not just listening to a 7 hour track that he recorded on shuffle. The algorithm creates a unique mix of all the various elements on each launch, mixing things differently and shifting stuff around so it genuinely feels like it will never run out of something new no matter how long you run it. It creates an illusion that the whole composition is being made on the fly by an Artifical Intelligence.

Jarre has always excelled at taking the listener across a sonic and emotional journey in his studio albums, on this project he has managed to create an infinite amount of different journeys while also retaining the familiar emotions his fans love about his music. Whether you play it in the background on a quiet evening or listen to it with focus and intent, that magic will constantly be with you on whatever journey you're taken on by this amazing project.

A while ago I asked a group of fans on Facebook "what makes Jarre, Jarre?" The responses were hugely varied and it was great to see what his music meant to different people. One fan commented that his music has surprise parts, a break in the melody or rhythm that comes unexpectedly, giving the listener a goosebumps YEAH! sense of euphoria.

With EōN, Jarre's greatest achievement is managing to weave this element of surprise with each listen. You never know what's going to happen next with the music, but when it does suddenly shift or change or completely go in a different direction, it does it exactly as you'd expect from his YEAH! moments. When you realise that half of this magic is randomly generated by a computer, and that your next YEAH! moment will be entirely different and unpredictable, you genuinely feel like you are standing on the edge of a brave new world of art, music, and science all blended into one.

It is this constant state of discovery, surprise, elation, and euphoria that makes EōN so timeless.

[sobtanian]

20 Bullet-point Apple AirPods Pro Review

1\ Yes they look like little hairdryers. I’m sure my mum had this exact model in the 80s.

2\ They’re much shorter than the original AirPods, but also much chubbier.

3\ They actually wedge into your ear canal, rather than just hang by gravity.

4\ Which means their audio quality doesn’t change with movement.

5\ Unlike the previous two AirPods, which were really just standard Apple buds but a lot more convenient.

6\ The case is a bit bigger than the original one.

7\ And it opens sideways.

8\ It still comfortably fits into your jeans’ small inner pocket. A crucial factor if you ask me.

9\ They are very comfortable to wear, just like the originals. You don’t get that whole finger-in-ear effect like with other IEMs, especially foam ones.

10\ They have active noise-cancelling. It still freaks me out because it’s magic. It’s no better than the many other rivals who beat Apple to this.

11\ Controls have changed. Now, you gotta physically press a little button on the stem to do stuff, rather than just tap the pods.

12\ Both left and right controls do the same: one click play/pause. Two next track. Three previous track. Click and hold to enable/disable noise-cancellation.

13\ Once you get used to them, these controls are way better than the previous ones, as you can use any spare hand to do any of the above functions.

14\ Very handy if say you’re walking the dog.

15\ They sound really, really good. Much better than the originals.

16\ Whether that’s because the audio wizardry inside has changed (it has), or because they actually stay in place and are consistent, I don’t know.

17\ Probably both.

18\ They obviously “just work” with your Apple devices. And are just as seamless as the originals. Open the case near your Apple device and you’re good to go.

19\ They fit my ears really well. The older ones had to stick out at a weird angle.

20\ Pulling them out of your ear is different than the older Pods as they’re actually in your ear, not hanging off the edge. Needs getting used to.

In summary: Do you use Apple? Stop reading and go buy a pair. Or ask Santa for them. You won’t regret it, I promise.

[sobtanian]

An open letter to 13 year-old me, September, 1990

Hey! I promise it'll get better!

I know, I know, currently life sucks. You've gone back to Iraq after Saddam invaded Kuwait. Sanctions are in full force, the bread you eat is made out of animal feed, literally. Electricity comes and goes, the water sometimes comes out as mud from the pipes, and everyone is stockpiling food and oil and petrol and water because everyone knows that a big war is coming, but no one knows when.

Your dad was imprisoned by the regime for something you don't quite understand or even know if true or not. You only get one day off a week, and every other week you gotta get up at the crack of dawn on that day off and spend hours in the baking sun being humiliated by the guards so you can visit your dad. The shell of your dad really, the torture he went through left a scar that never healed all his life.

High school sucks! All school sucks, but this year it double sucks because there's all the above, and you can't tell your friends your dad is in prison because you're too ashamed so you lie that he's in Vienna of all places on some sort of business. They know you're lying. You know that they know you're lying. But it remains unsaid except for a handful of very close friends who you confide in.

And that Commodore Amiga everyone has? Well, yeah, that sucks too sorry. You got a ZX Spectrum, they've got an Amiga. You'll spend the next five years envious of them, but hey there's nothing we can do about that - yet. Don't worry, in a few years you'll have a killer 486 PC and everyone will be envious of you. Just be patient.

The war will come, Baghdad will be destroyed, but you survive. You survive through the cold winter, the dark nights, where stories are told to the light of the single kerosene lamp and the single kerosene heater that the whole family is gathered around in the same room, while you hear planes flying past and bombs dropping and missiles zoom so close to where you are they shake your bones and deafen you. You'll spend the cold day surveying the damage and gathering water and petrol and food from the brave souls out to sell during the war, and hey using the garden as a toilet is only natural.

You'll try to read your books with the weak light and listen to your Jean-Michel Jarre tapes on your Walkman that you got for your 13th birthday back in England and the books and the music and the Walkman will always take you back to that glorious summer in Manchester where everything was good and nothing could go wrong, except it all did. And when that precious electricity comes back briefly, you'll play and replay your VHS copies of his concerts, watching in awe every time at how beautiful it all is, and how for that short hour or two you're not in a war-torn Baghdad, you're in Paris or London mesmerised by the music, the lights, the lasers, the fireworks, the carefreeness, the freedom, the safety, the beauty, the hope.

It'll all pass, and you'll survive. You'll go back to England, where you were born and always wanted to stay, your family will soon follow, you'll work and meet a lovely girl and get married and have two boys and get a dog and buy that Amiga you've always wanted and soon your memories of Iraq will be of all the nice things you're taking for granted right now: your great, great friends, your grandparents' house, your dogs, the food, the city, the people, your family.

You'll also see Jean-Michel Jarre live many times, you'll even get to meet him and trust me, he's a great person in real life. You'll talk to him and give him a hug and tears will sting your eyes and your heart will burst out of your chest with pride and admiration and love for this musician who singularly inspires you and keeps you going through thick and thin.

In 2017, the year you turn 40, you'll travel to Masada Israel to see Jean-Michel Jarre live again. It's a great concert, it always is, made all that more special by the fact that it's in the middle of nowhere, 400 metres below sea level. You'll take some photos there, and they turn out to be really good. So good, that Jean-Michel himself sees them and asks you to share them with him. You can't quite believe it but you share them, of course you do, and happiness and pride fills your heart again.

It doesn't end there though.

One cold day in October 2019 you'll get a package from France. Inside you'll find a print of one of your pictures from the concert. With shaking hands you'll read the scribble at the bottom:

Pour Ali Alsawaf Un très grand merci pour vos belles photos Jean-Michel Jarre

For Ali Alsawaf: A very big thank you for your beautiful photos.

I promised you it'll get better. And so it did.

[sobtanian]

OK STOP THE WORLD I’M GETTING OFF OMG #dopplegangerwatch https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt1CHhrFIXN/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=104njr8wwxabv

[sobtanian]

Heh https://www.instagram.com/p/Btd76adlek8/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=87txwzr6gvt6

[sobtanian]

THE STRUGGLE IS REAL! https://www.instagram.com/p/BtYYSy0F9pn/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=2nyuhipfyyhb

[sobtanian]

Found this on the floor outside his room. Can you tell I married a nurse? Feel awful 🤢 https://www.instagram.com/p/BtSNk2NFhiL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=igptq3fjt5i0

[sobtanian]

Reading material. Winner of the Baillie Gifford prize 2018. https://www.instagram.com/p/BtOfQ_8DWF2/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1g2w63mszn6u4

[sobtanian]

Players 3 and 4 in a rare moment of not arguing. https://www.instagram.com/p/BsYmfQNlac9/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=mzbn9jmirv8c

[sobtanian]

And the last delivery of 2018 is this #Kraftwerk beauty. Looking forward to Jarre’s biography next year! https://www.instagram.com/p/BsDb5LVlwvZ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=zkse6bo0nmvp

[sobtanian]

Amazing surprise Christmas gift from the wife, this divine hot chocolate velvetiser from Hotel Chocolat 😍 https://www.instagram.com/p/Br0ay6Nlh7U/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=d18t57yor7ag

[sobtanian]

Bookmarking my position in the book. This one is for all of you who know how to properly love a book 😊 https://www.instagram.com/p/BruvPuNlpas/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=105o2n868vyhp

[sobtanian]

New wallet GET! https://www.instagram.com/p/BrqE2IbFSl6/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=pan9t2mfoo85

[sobtanian]

Today’s amazing surprise delivery 😍 https://www.instagram.com/p/BrQVZI_FPdk/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1473f9zpyr1v9