It's 1983, and Jarre is asked to create music for an art exhibit about supermarkets. After working on the project for a while, he begins to see the work as an art object of its own, a unique entity. He produces one vinyl copy of
and sells it at auction in France for 69000 francs. After the auction, Jarre authorizes Radio Luxembourg to play the album, instructing audiences to "pirate me!" Many listeners do so, and subsequent bootleg copies appear.
Backstory out of the way, then. This record is FANTASTIC! It's chock full of wonderfully dated art-pop tropes -- middlebrow minimalism, pompous news-watch synths, vague cod-tribalism, everything all at once. The early '80s in all its creepy Fairlight majesty.
― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 18 April 2004 05:08 (twenty-two years ago)