Jean-Michel Jarre reveals video for "heavy" new single Brutalism

Jean-Michel Jarre portrait 2021 — (Image credit: Yunling Fang)

Jean-Michel Jarre has just released a video for his brand new single Brutalism, which can be viewed below.

It's the fist new music from Jarre's upcoming album Oxymore, which will be released through Sony Music on October 21.

“That’s definitely a heavier track,” explains Jarre, who celebrated his 74th birthday earlier this week. "I wanted to create an apocalyptic mood. Like a kind of big bang of Berlin techno, at the beginning when it was an explosion, that kind of feel, maybe due to the remains of the war."

Oxymore is an homage to the late French composer Pierre Henry, with whom Jarre had been intending on collaborating for Jarre’s Grammy-nominated project album Electronica. A musical journey where Pierre Henry's sounds interact with Jarre's world back-and-forth between analogue and digital sounds and inspired by the French movement ‘musique concrete’.

Oxymore's conceptual creation builds on the immersive qualities of its 2021 predecessor, Amazônia, which provided the soundtrack to Sebastião Salgado's exhibition of the same name. This time, the creative process was road-tested in an exclusive 360 concert for a small number of fans. The finished album is also a binaural recording – ie. it was tracked using two microphones to give the music a 3D feel when listened with headphones. Oxymore will be accompanied by a VR world, Oxyville, which is designed to further enhance the listening experience.

“Oxyville will be a virtual music city, and in the future I will invite other artists to be a part of it, as well as hold masterclasses and other events," adds Jarre. "I want it to become a sandbox for new music experiences."

Pre-order Oxymore.

Jean-Michel Jarre — (Image credit: Sony Music)

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.