Metamorphoses

On 31 December 1999 Jarre held a spectacular music and light show in the Egyptian desert, near Giza. The show, called The 12 Dreams of the Sun, celebrated the new millennium and 5,000 years of civilization in Egypt. It also offered a preview of his new album, Metamorphoses. The concert which started on new years eve and followed all the way through to the dawn of the new millennium in a 12 hour spectacular which including many performances from local artists and musicians, the concert used the backdrop of the great pyramids to project images onto, but fog during the evening concert by Jarre caused the projections on the facades of the pyramids to be blocked from view. Jarre played for around two hours during the build up to the new millennium with a countdown at midnight and spectacular firework display and then returned on stage in the early morning to perform a second slot to see in the first sunrise of the new millennium.

Jarre released Metamorphoses, his first fully-vocal album, in 2000. The compositions and their arrangement on this techno-based album co-produced with Joachim Garraud are extremely imaginative, and marked a departure from Jarre's previous style. He began integrating sound effects, including the radio interference from mobile phones (used on the track Tout est Bleu) and also sampled his coffee making machine and also from Apple computers, including an implementation of Macintalk, a Macintosh program that allowed Jarre to have a computer generated voice speak his strange lyrics on the song Love, Love, Love. Laurie Anderson made her second guest appearance in the Jarre discography on the opening track. The listener was also treated to collaborations with Natacha Atlas on vocals, and Sharon Corr of Irish pop group The Corrs on violin. Metamorphoses was not released in the USA until a couple of years later.

In 2001 Jarre performed a concert in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke and Tetsuya TK Komuro in the Okinawa beaches, to celebrate the real beginning of the new millennium. The concert was called Rendez-vous in Space and the short-lived group called itself The ViZitors. Later that year, Jarre played at the Acropolis in Greece a charity concert for the Elpida Foundation.