Pete Townshend has collaborated with French composer and legendary electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre on a new song titled “Travelator (Part 2)", which will be released on Jarre’s star studded new album “Electronica Part 1: The Time Machine” on October 16. The song will also be included on a three-part EP that will be released around Christmas time this year.
The “Electronica” project tells the story of Jarre's history of electronic music. He has selected an array of artists to collaborate with who have directly or indirectly contributed to this genre of music over the past 5 decades. Other artists on the album include Laurie Anderson, Tangerine Dream, Moby, John Carpenter, Lang Lang, Gesaffelstein, Armin Van Buuren, Air, and Vince Clarke.
Jarre is planning to release “Electronica Part 2” in Spring 2016.
For more information, please visit jeanmicheljarre.com.
In an interview with USA Today, Jarre said that Pete ranked high on his wish list of artists to collaborate with on this project: "He was the first guy to introduce sequencers into rock music with songs such as Baba O'Riley. As one of the creators of the rock opera as a genre, he has an epic approach to performance that's quite close to my approach of performances for big concerts."
"It's quite unusual to start a song from scratch and say, 'Let's share our toys together.' Most of the time, when you are in the studio, you are revealing yourself, you're a bit naked. You can express your weaknesses, your awkward way of approaching sound. Sharing these intimate moments is like inviting somebody into your private room. It's very different from sending a file in an abstract way. It may work, but, as we know, it's more for marketing reasons to have these kind of collaborations. In this case, it was something I wanted to share with this person in particular."
Jean-Michel Jarre describes the project on his website: “Electronica is a concept based on the idea that I wanted to gather around me, people from different generations, people who have influenced me and being a constant source of inspiration, people who are shaping one way or another electronic music. It’s like gathering a tribe of friends, people sharing some similar vision to mine."
"I had no idea in the beginning if this project was going to work but everybody I contacted said yes. It was also very important to me, to travel physically, to meet the collaborators, to have direct contact and work together properly. The project grew far beyond my expectations with a lot more collaborations than I thought at the beginning, so I decided to divide the project in two separate albums: Electronica 1 and Electronica 2”
“The process I used almost systematically with each track on the album involved composing the track with each collaborator in mind. The whole challenge was to arrive with a demo that was convincing, but which also left enough space for the collaborator to work on that track and to change it and add their personality.”
“It’s not something artificial, it’s not like featuring artists for the sake of it. For every artist, every collaborator in this project, there is a reason why, a reason why in terms of music, in terms of sound, inspiration; this creates the flesh of Electronica. My whole life and career as musician is covered on this project through the different styles and facets of electronic music.”
