Jean Michel Jarre

Given that the types of music he’s concerned himself with over the course of his career - which, at this point, has spanned in excess of four decades - it’s quite astonishing to think that Jean Michel Jarre has not only sold more than eighty million albums, but also ingratiated himself into popular culture in a way that no other ambient producer - except for maybe Brian Eno - has achieved. He’s certainly the towering figure of the new age music movement, so much so that he earned his own radio station on popular video game Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008; his success, though, has been built on much more than just his records, with his breathtaking live shows having plenty to do with it, too. Having performed to over a million people at Place de la Concorde in Paris in the seventies - he’s since broken his own record three times in that respect - he’s often released new albums to coincide with huge gigs, with his sprawling shows lasting over two hours and incorporating diverse instrumentation and frankly mindblowing light shows. He continues to make appearances at UK arenas on a sporadic basis, so there’s always the possibility you’ll get to see for yourself before too long.