Jean-Michel Jarre releases 52-minute music score ‘Amazônia’: Listen

For this, he has closely worked with the scientific team of the Museum of Ethnography of Geneva to replicate the atmosphere of the South American forest and the inhabitants living in it. To emulate this, he has made a refined mix of orchestral organic elements with other electronic components and real-life sounds. To make sure he was delivering an even more impressive and realistic result, apart from the normal stereo recording, Jean-Michel Jarre has also released a special binaural version of the score. The binaural recording is a spectacular sound experience that must be listened with headphones. It is recorded using 2 microphones instead of one, so you can have a 3D stereo sound sensation. The purpose in this case is that you can feel like you are in the middle of the Amazonia forest.

When speaking about the ‘Amazônia’ project, this is what Jean-Michel Jarre had to say:

 “In the Amazonian forest, there is the dimension of nomadism; moving from one place to another, from darkness to light, from a gentle quietude to a latent threat, moving forward leaving reality behind to sink into the power of rites and dreams. I built this music like a toolbox, made up of different sound objects, like a wandering through organic, natural, ethnic, orchestral and electronic elements, which would only pass by like in a forest that we would cross and leave behind us, temporary vestiges of a time and a space without end.”

“To represent the eternal human presence in this great green ocean, I selected incomparable sound material from the precious archives of the Museum of Ethnography in Geneva, unparalleled for their timbre and their dreamlike power. I composed ‘Amazonia’ in one go, day and night, in front of these photos scrolling in a loop in front of me, immersing myself in this immensity, familiar and mysterious, serene and disturbing, powerful and vulnerable… This addictive and fatal drug. Sebastião Salgado’s forest.”

The Amazônia exhibition will be opening to the public for the first time on May 20 in Paris, before bringing the project to other big renowned cities like Rome, London, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Listen to the ‘Amazônia’ Binaural audio here, and listen to the normal version below:

Image Credit: Peter Lindbergh