Here’s something we didn’t have on our bingo card for 2026: there’s a new release on the way from Jean-Michel Jarre. But it isn’t a new album or even one of his multimedia extravaganzas in an unlikely location. Oh no. It’s something almost quaintly old-fashioned for him: a book.
And it isn’t a memoir. Well, not a straightforward one anyway. Instead, it's a proper weighty tome that tells the story of electronic music, a genre he played a not-insignificant role in shaping himself.
Machines: History Of Electronic Music will be published via Thames & Hudson in November and purports to cover the whole nine yards, from Luigi Rossolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto The Art Of Noises, via Surrealism, Bauhaus (the art school not the goth band), Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Kraftwerk. The book also charts the technical breakthroughs, such as tape manipulation, the switch from analogue to digital recording and AI-assisted music.
Contributors include Vince Clarke, Gary Numan, Nicolas Godin of Air, Richie Hawtin, Armin Van Buuren, Hans Zimmer, Gillian Gilbert of New Order and - perhaps rather more unexpectedly - Pete Townshend.
But as well as being a history of the music, Machines sounds like it will be a must for devotees of the actual hardware, too. The publisher’s blurb promises that Jarre "invites readers into his formidable archive - one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of electronic and electro-acoustic instruments.
“Through these machines, Jarre traces the evolution of a century of sonic experimentation, underscoring the ideas, technologies and cultural movements that shaped electronic music as we know it today.” It also features “130 curated, specially photographed examples - from iconic modular synthesizers to rare prototypes and bespoke one-offs.”
It also sounds like there will be plenty of personal reminiscing from the 77-year-old electronic pioneer. Machines, Thames & Hudson say, “is the account of an artist whose life and work are inseparable from the history of electronic music itself. Jarre reflects on his childhood fascination with reel-to-reel tape machines… Personal anecdotes and expert commentary are interwoven with rare archival material, technical schematics, recreations of sonic experiments, and sequenced stills from legendary live performances.”
The book is out on 24 November and, if you’re into doing the pre-order thing, head over to the Thames & Hudson website.
