He may have performed world record-breaking shows around the world but Jean-Michel Jarre says the warm welcome he receives in Scotland is hard to beat.
The godfather of electronic music, who broke his own Guinness World Record for the largest concert after performing in 3.5 million people in Moscow in 1997, will bring his first live show in six years to Glasgow's SSE Hydro tonight.
The show combines music with stunning laser and light displays, and Jean-Michel can't wait to debut it for his Scottish fans.
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"I always thought that the Northern part of Europe was warmer," he says. "The more you go North, the more you have a warm, welcoming audience.
"I have always felt very welcome in Scotland, and that gives a great feeling when you are on stage. I am especially looking forward to playing Scotland because of this."
The electronic music pioneer is famous for his spectacular state-of-the-art set designs and says there will be a few surprises during his new show.
"I am working on a fairly exciting stage design," he says. "I've always been involved in the visual aspect of my work. It's even more important now as we are in days where technology allows us to push creativity even more than when I started out.
"It's a very exciting challenge. I want to try and share an immersive sound and vision experience with the audience, something fresh and new and, hopefully, totally different from a usual electronic or rock show."
However, regardless of the venue, Jean-Michel says it's the audience that makes the show.
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"I've always felt that a performance is always about the chemistry you create between the stage and the audience, no matter the size of each," he says. "I've always been interested in trying to conceive a total spectacle where the audience is really immersed in a kind of voyage or trip.
"In these days where technology offers you so many possibilities but everyone has the same tools, endeavouring to be different is a challenge I enjoy taking on.
"I want to share my experience to create one-off shows with the audience during this tour. I want to give each audience a unique experience."
The tour is in support of Jean-Michel's new album, Electronica Volume 2: The Heart of Noise, the follow-up to Electronica Volume 1, which was released in 2015.
The new record is the second part of the Frenchman's Electronica project, which saw him collaborate with some of the biggest names in music, including Primal Scream, Pets Shop Boys and film composer Hans Zimmer.
"The project actually came from an idea I started some time ago," he says. "I gathered musicians, artists and collaborators who have been and who are an ongoing source of inspiration to me.
"Because everyone said yes, the project became much bigger than I had imagined and I decided to divide it into two separate albums.
"The essence of the double album was to travel to meet the artists I invited on board, spend time in their working environment and physically share a creative process, merging our DNA through a piece of music."
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The finished product is a fascinating work that defies genres and merges Jean-Michel's trademark sound with other styles, creating something that seems both familiar and new.
Jean-Michel hand picked every artist that he worked with on the album, with each carefully chosen because they had something special to bring to the record.
"Every artist is there for a reason," he says. "Be it Robert del Naja from Massive Attack, Pete Townshend, Gary Numan, Julia Holter ,Moby or Air, each and every one of them have a singular and instantly recognisable sound and I wanted to create something new from merging our sounds.
"The idea was to mix many styles and directions. The real challenge was to try and create a cohesion and coherence throughout the two albums and I think I can say this was achieved.
"I am delighted having collaborated with so many prestigious, talented artists, beginners or legends, whatever the generation and to show it in this way shows that electronic music has a family, a legacy and a future."
The album also reveals how much electronic music has changed and evolved over the decades and Jean-Michel says he couldn't be happier that the genre he pioneered has now gone global.
"I am delighted to see that electronic music has taken over the world," he says. "We were just a few believers or geeks a couple of decades ago trying to break new ground in a world dominated by rock 'n' roll, disco and metal. I feel more at home in the music scene today than I did back then for sure, or at least less alone."
Jean-Michel Jarre plays the SSE Hydro tonight (Friday, October 14).
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