Considered one of his most ambitious projects to date, Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxymore, was conceived and produced as an immersive work, and is also being released in both spatial and 3D binaural formats. To produce the album master, Jarre worked with sound designer Hervé Déjardin – initiator of the Radio France Innovation Studio – who used L-Acoustics L-ISA Studio to create and deliver the 360° experience.
The immersive concepts of Oxymore were ‘road tested’ during a live world preview showcase at the Hyper Weekend Festival at the Maison de la Radio in Paris in early 2022, with the creators able to translate and extend concepts from the live performance to the new album using the L-ISA Studio immersive software platform.
Using this technology, Jarre and Déjardin set out to test the limits of what is artistically possible. Déjardin says that L-ISA Studio gave him the canvas he needed.
‘I spent a lot of time looking at the tools I would need to realise Jean-Michel Jarre’s creative vision, which was to make a deeper emotional connection with the listener,’ he recalls. ‘I decided to use L-ISA Studio because I knew it was more than capable of handling all the spatial movements I needed for the composition. Based on my prior experience with L-Acoustics, I also knew that L-ISA Studio was a stable platform and that I wouldn’t encounter any technical issues.’
In his ‘day job’ at Radio France, where he contributes to the development of immersive audio, Déjardin routinely tests new software tools and working methodologies. For Oxymore, he says that he needed a tool that would carry the project forward, putting Jarre’s demanding artistic dimension before the technical. Using L-ISA Studio, the project was mixed at the Radio France studio. Once the mix was completed using 12 loudspeakers, Déjardin and Jean-Michel Jarre also monitored the mix on 5.1.4 and 7.1.4 set-ups, using L-ISA Studio as the bridge between the various formats. At the end of the project, it was output to Dolby Atmos.
In addition to the multichannel surround mixes, Déjardin also had to account for the binaural rendering for spatial audio distribution – something that he says can be enormously challenging for producers to get right in modern immersive productions.
‘I think this is the most important thing that today’s producers should concentrate on, because I see a lot of productions that work for loudspeakers, but how many people listen with 5.1 or 7.1? The essential point, as I see on my train every morning, is that people are listening on headphones.’
A great deal of care and detail was put into automation during the mixing process Déjardin says, describing the hundreds of automation lines he wrote to capture all the spatial movements on the album: ‘The importance of capturing these movements cannot be overstated. For just two tracks, I would have 300 or 400 automation lines to incorporate spatial movements within the song. I know I can rely on L-ISA Studio for this degree of accuracy.’
As one of electronic music’s most accomplished artists, Jean-Michel Jarre continues to inspire future generations: ‘Jean-Michel is exceptional because he is still young, fresh, curious and passionate,’ Déjardin says. ‘All the conceptual work in the beginning was to explore what we could do with spatialisation, since it can convey a greater degree of emotion. L-ISA Studio worked very well and was exactly what we needed in this regard. Jean-Michel wants to take listeners to a new place whilst also pushing the creative frontiers of where sound is going in the future and I am certain we have achieved this on Oxymore.’
Jarre sums up the experience of creating Oxymore: ‘Together, Hervé and I called on the best current technology on the project to create the feeling of being in the centre of the sound of music. With this kind of composition, I think we can really, for the first time, be in the middle of the experience, and further develop the essential and visceral relationship with the music.’
