Jean-Michel Jarre Quotes

I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds.

I was always interested in mixing experimentation with pop music, and Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream - we were all doing it at the same time, just very isolated from each other, all in our different cellars, in different worlds, without the Internet - underground in every sense.

In terms of the organic feel and the love for noises, I definitely feel more connected to Four Tet and Fennesz, as any dance floor artist. I do like some dancey stuff like Martyn when I DJ, but I draw my inspiration from other things.

When I first started out, I was making really slow, psychedelic ambient music because it was all I could do.

I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

I am a massive fan of early electronica like Steve Reich, Pat Metheny and Thomas Dolby. I used to be a big raver, too, so anything dance. I love ambient music like Tunng. I love acoustic and classical, too.

I'm also very impressed with the best people in experimental electronic world, like Peta and Eckart Aillers and Finez and Jim O'Rourke and Oren Umbarci and Francesco Lopez. Most of them use the computer as their main instrument.

I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn't very good no matter how much money you had.

I can't think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

The idea to do the album only on keyboards kind of happened by accident. I was quite happy with the sound and felt it really didn't need more instruments, so I didn't use them.

The first artist that did it for me with just production was James Blake... I was just blown away... I feel like James Blake kind of was the one that introduced me into that world.

A lot of my favourite songs have Eno involved, but I love the work he does on the first two Roxy Music albums. He's creating atmospheres as opposed to composition, and it's a beautiful mixture with everything else in that band.

In school, I did a lot of computer work. I'd take splices from Kurt Weill songs and loop them in bars, in beats of seven, trying all different kinds of things.

My first synthesizer was the VCS3. I got it in Bristol in the late Sixties, long before Pink Floyd used them. I had to sell an acoustic guitar and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to raise the money. You can do fantastic things with modern computers, but you cannot use them in the same intuitive, spontaneous way you can a VCS3.

I made an electronic record in the vein of Cluster. I was programming synthesizers and drum machines and that sort of thing.

I like Philip Glass. I think he's made some really great contributions to his field. I love his style of playing - it's very loop-style.

I want to keep Flume kind of experimental, weird, melodic, pretty.

The 11-minute 'Colouring of Pigeons' takes The Knife's experimental, cerebral side to new heights.

My first bit of gear was a Roland JV-1010 sound module. I used to hammer the hell out of that.

I play keyboards and Pro Tools, if you want to look at it as an instrument.

Massive Attack has always been more of an experiment than a band or even a collective.

Clipping is a very specific, concept-y thing. We have all these rules: we don't sample drums. We create all our own sounds. I don't speak in the first person. We come from a background of experimental music like John Cage... Philip Glass.

At the time, 'Oxygene' was considered a totally 'far out' concept... What was 'in' at the time was disco, hard-rock, and the early days of punk... and moreover, 'Oxygene' was instrumental. And I was French!

There's a lot of electronic surround-sound music, and I've done a lot of work where I write music for other people to move around a space.

There is nothing wrong in electronic music or synthesised music.