Essentials & Rarities
Essentials & Rarities (previously announced as Memories & Rarities) is a compilation album by Jean-Michel Jarre, released in 2011. The double CD set consists of two distinctive CDs: Essentials, which is a compilation of Jarre's most famous work, and Rarities, which compiles tracks made before his ground-breaking album Oxygène.
| Essentials & Rarities | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compilation album by | ||||
| Released | 30 May 2011 | |||
| Recorded | 1968–2002; compiled, edited and mastered in early 2011 | |||
| Genre | Electronic | |||
| Length | 122:44 | |||
| Label | Disques Dreyfus | |||
| Producer | Jean-Michel Jarre | |||
| Jean-Michel Jarre chronology | ||||
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| Review scores | |
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
Most of the tracks on Rarities had never been officially released on CD (apart from tracks from Les Granges Brûlées). The Rarities CD includes a selection of tracks from Deserted Palace, his first single "La Cage" and its B-side "Erosmachine", and the track "Happiness Is a Sad Song", which he composed in 1968 for "Les Fêtes de la Jeunesse" in Reims and is Jean-Michel Jarre's first musical release. Both "Happiness Is a Sad Song" and "La Cage / Erosmachine" were composed during Jarre's time at the Groupe Recherche Musicale.
The album was released in memory of Francis Dreyfus, the founder of Jarre's first record label Disques Dreyfus who died the previous year.