Jarre Trek Beyond: Jean Michel Jarre talks David Bowie, hanging out with Mick Jagger and the Bataclan attacks

It's coming up to midnight in Nîmes at the end of a Bastille Day that's been robustly celebrated by the 146,000 inhabitants of the southern French city. Following the morning's formal commemoration of the 1789 revolution, the old town switched into St. Patrick's Day-style party mode with the myth that it's only the English and Irish who fall down drunk in the street well and truly shattered.

Come 9pm, 5,000 of the Bastille Day celebrants had packed in to Arènes De Nîmes, a Roman amphitheatre-turned-bullring, for a headlining show by Jean Michel Jarre who demonstrated why he's a veritable synth pop God round these parts. The show, which we'll come back to later, is an absolute cracker with the disgustingly well-preserved 67-year-old - seriously, he makes Springsteen look like Iggy Pop in comparison - mixing such classics as 'Oxygene 4', 'Equinoxe 5' and 'Rendezvous 4', with bangers from the brand new Electronica 2, which includes The Pet Shop Boys, Julia Holter, Peaches, Hans Zimmer, Gary Numan, Jeff Mills, Sebastien Teller, Primal Scream and Edward Snowden among its guest turns.

The mood coming out of the gig is celebratory until mobile phones start ringing. A few seconds after answering hers, a teenage girl screams and collapses onto the pavement, crying. It sets off a chain reaction around the Place des Arènes, the likes of which I've never encountered before and certainly hope I never encounter again. I know something awful has happened, but only find out what when I get back to my hotel where staff and guests are staring ashen-faced at a TV live broadcasting the shocking events in Nice.

Meeting him earlier in the day, Jean Michel Jarre had spoken of the climate of fear that's existed in France since last November's Paris shootings. "For the first time in my life I felt we were in a state of war," he confided. "The night of the Bataclan I was in the studio recording with this amazing artist called Christophe. We switched off our phones and were cut off from the outside world. When I came back home at five or six o'clock in the morning, the whole of Paris was silent which never usually happens; it's a 24 hour city. There were no lights, just police cars with no sirens. The mentality in France has changed because of it. We're all more scared and suspicious which is, I'm afraid, what these people want. We mustn't give in to them."

Jarre had otherwise been in chipper form and has he talked about his motivation for the Electronica project, which has been almost a decade in the creating. "When I started it, I said, 'Okay, I would really like to collaborate with people who are a source of inspiration to me,'" he resumes. "Each of the tracks was written with a specific artist in mind rather than me thinking, 'I have 18 songs lying around; who am I going to get to sing and play on them?' I hate the process of sending music files to people who you never get to meet or talk to. To be a true collaboration it has to be done face to face, otherwise it's a fraud."

You may have done a double-take a moment ago when you saw Edward Snowden on the list of people who'll be receiving Electronica 2 royalty payments. Seeing as he couldn't come to him, Jean Michel travelled to Moscow to meet the NSA whistleblower who features on the in-yer-face 'Exit'. "Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different to saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say; it's a deeply anti-social principle because rights are not just individual, they are collective. If you don't stand up for it who will?" ponders Snowden as all techno hell breaks loose behind him. "He's living in the centre in Moscow, but exactly where I don't know for obvious reasons," Jarre told us. "It was quite complicated to meet him but we really do need people like Edward. He's the real modern hero. Part of the reason for doing these Electronica records is the relationship we have nowadays with technology. On one hand, you literally have the world in your pocket with smartphones. On the other, we feel as if we're being spied on by the outside world. My mom was in the French Resistance and told me that at the time in 1941, many French people considered them to be troublemakers and traitors. History tells us different, but that's how they were perceived at the time in certain quarters. You know what resistance is really about in Ireland; you've been raised with the same values as us.

"In 50 years time, Edward Snowden will be recognised as the great human being he is. I was really impressed with his integrity, honesty and humour. I didn't know that he was out in the field so much. He went into the CIA at 21 and at 24 was in the NSA. He's a super-gifted brain and geek. We're all geeks in this project but he's special. Edward Snowden did what he did to improve his country."

How does Moscow compare now to when Jarre went there in 1997, and played to 3.5 million people as part of the city's 850th birthday celebrations? "Even though it was instrumental, my music wasn't allowed in the Soviet Union because it was associated with escape, evasion and freedom. People there copied smuggled albums onto cassettes and x-ray film, which was used as a substitute for vinyl. You etched the record on to it and then made a hole in the middle. Now, in the centre of Moscow it's very Americanised, but when you go outside you sense that the majority of people would like to go back to the Soviet era. Which is what Putin is exploiting."

Among the numerous Electronica 2 stand-outs is 'What You Want', a sleazy disco stomper featuring the Queen of Sleazy Disco Stomp, Peaches. "She's extraordinary and an adorable person," he enthused. "Peaches is one of the most articulate artists you can imagine; provocative but never vulgar. She has this unique ability to mix rap, rock and circus burlesque. One of the most fantastic shows I've seen in the last couple of years is a Peaches performance. It was just her, three lights and a black table. Nothing else! She's an artist; everything Peaches does has a point. If it was 40-years ago, Andy Warhol would be following her around with his camera. I've played the track we did once or twice with samples, but then I stopped because when I perform it next it has to be with her."

Asked whether he hopes to do a show with Peaches and some of his other Electronica co-conspirators, Jean Michel shot back: "Definitely. It's been impossible to arrange during the festival season when everybody's doing their own thing, but the plan early next year is to join forces for a massive concert."

It turns out that Jarre is almost as big a goo-goo eyed Cyndi Lauper fan as I am. "People thought, 'Strange, why Cyndi?' but for me she is the first Lady Gaga. She's a kid from the new wave of New York City, an MTV child. She's crazy, adorable, nice and one of the most accomplished musicians I've ever met. She can do blues, pop, rock and musicals like Kinky Boots, which won her a Tony Award. She's a huge LGBT rights advocate and so funny to hang out with... It's been an extraordinary journey working on these two records with people like her, Massive Attack, Moby, Hans Zimmer and Jeff Mills. And you know what? It's the old guy, me, who's learnt from them."

Teacher and pupil were united when Jeff Mills flexed his Detroit muscle on 'The Architect'. "One of the biggest surprises and honours of my career was when the originators of the Detroit scene, like him, started talking about me as an influence. Techno was the music that soundtracked the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and it's now the music of underground resistance in America. Jeff Mills is at the forefront of that, which is why I wanted to collaborate with him."

Another recent addition to Jean Michel's Christmas card list is Damon Albarn who's turned the tables on the Frenchman by asking him to appear on the new Gorillaz album. "Yes, we've spent some time together in my recording studio," Jarre cautiously confirmed. It's Damon's project so I'll leave it to him to do the revealing, which is what I asked of the collaborators on the two Electronica albums. I wanted as much as possible for it to be a surprise, like it would have been in the '70s or '80s before the internet made it impossible to keep anything secret! 'What I will say is that I was very happy to work with such a great, great artist. He's a unique, eclectic animal. To go from Blur to Chinese opera to Malian music and do them all so well takes a special talent. On top of that, he's also a really nice guy. If the collaboration comes to light - and you never know with these things - it will I think be quite special."

On hearing of his death in January, Jarre came up with the great tweeted line of "David Bowie being the Picasso of rock 'n' roll." The two shared a New York night out together in the '70s when they were both partial to a little mind-expansion. "We spent a lot of time lying on the ground with Mick Jagger eating some strange peanuts," he fondly reminisces. "I never found out exactly what they were. David had that kind of remote attitude, but at the same time he was like a child. He was curious in a very innocent way. The most clever and intelligent people are those who are not afraid of saying, 'I don't know'. And David was like that."

Should there be an Electronica 3, Jarre will do his damnedest to ensure that woman of the moment Héloïse Letissier is on it. "I adore Christine and the Queens," he smiled. "I wrote a song, 'Paradis Perdue', which was a big hit in the '70s for a very interesting artist called Christophe who's on Electronica 2. Héloïse/Christine mixed it up with samples from a Kanye West track and had problems because of it. Not so much with us, but with him."

While the impeccably dressed and coiffed sixtysomething ladies sat next to me in the Arènes de Nîmes almost had a collective coronary when Jarre strayed into nosebleed techno territory, having the two Electronica albums to draw on means that his current live show is no mere greatest hits package although, boy, what hits they are! With two sets of percussionists, 3D effects and lasers 'n' lights that could probably be seen from space, it's an eye-popping spectacle that Jean Michel's Irish admirers will be able to savour when he descends on the 3Arena in October. "My manager is from Dublin and will have her friends and family there, so it's going to have to be the gig of the tour," Jarre laughs. We'll hold him to that!

Electronica 2 is out now on Sony Music and gets a live October 10 airing in Dublin's 3Arena.