Equinoxe

Jarre recorded it between January and August 1978 in the home studio in his Paris apartment on a 16-track MCI machine, and Jean-Pierre Janiaud mixed it at Gang Studio with Patrick Foulon assisting. The 2014 remaster's notes list the ARP 2600, EMS VCS 3, Oberheim Polyphonic, Mellotron, ARP and Geiss sequencers, the Geiss Rhythmi-computer, a Korg KR-55 and an EMS Vocoder 1000. Ideas were first caught on a cassette recorder, and a rejected take became Part 7. Michel Granger painted the cover, "Le trac", and Charlotte Rampling took the back photograph. Jarre described the concept as a day in a person's life, from waking to sleeping. Disques Dreyfus released it on 1 December 1978 and Polydor licensed it worldwide in 1979.

It reached 11 in Britain, 5 in France, 3 in the Netherlands, 14 in Austria, 22 in Germany and 126 in the United States, and went platinum in France and gold in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. Davitt Sigerson in Melody Maker called it "slushily, pseudo-galactically crass and vapid", Cashbox found it "surprisingly accessible and invigorating", the Pittsburgh Press heard "a moody, melodic, masterful synthesizer symphony", AllMusic gives it three stars, and Phil Alexander in Mojo named it one of three key Jarre albums in 2015. On 14 July 1979 Jarre played it at the Place de la Concorde to a crowd reported at over a million, and its music turned up uncredited in Cosmos and in television idents. Equinoxe Infinity, a sequel, followed in 2018.