Jean Michel Jarre: Oxygene (1976)

Jean Michel Jarre is the son of film composer Maurice Jarre, who embarked on a musical career all his own. Contrary to popular belief, Oxygene was not Jean Michel Jarre’s debut album, it was actually Deserted Palace in 1972 (he released a single around 1970 called “La Cage”), but the early stuff is basically for historians only, and are very hard to come by. The early music was rather primitive, played on ARP and EMS synthesizers, plus Farfisa organ, but totally lacks the lush spacy atmospheres that he is best known for.

After a soundtrack album in 1973, he pretty much laid low, until 1976, when he recorded the album that made him famous the world over, Oxygene. The album was first released only in France, but in 1977 the album received an international release on Polydor guaranteeing him worldwide exposure. He realized he couldn’t go on recording albums like Deserted Palace and Les Granges Brûlées, so he went in the footsteps of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream (who were earning tons of success and recognition in this field of music at that time) but doing it in a more accessible fashion, getting more people interested in electronic music who otherwise wouldn’t be interested (Schulze often had the habit of recording music that took up to 30 minutes per side of an LP, sometimes as a double album, which I have no problem with, might have strained the attention spans of more amateur listeners). Here he starts a more lush sonic landscape, with tons of Eminent 310, plus EMS synthesizers (both the VCS-3 and the AKS), the ARP 2600, the RMI Harmonic synthesizer, and in one short passage, the Mellotron. The album is divided into six parts (“Oxygene Part I”, “Oxygene Part II”, etc.) and is meant to be listened to as a whole, as all the music segues together (except of course the part between “Part III” and “IV”, since that was the end of side one and beginning of side two of the vinyl). This album is full of highlights, “Part I” showing a rather dark spacy mood, with this strange operatic voice that was produced off a synthesizer (and remember this was 1976 before any digital samplers came around). “Part II” is always been a favorite of mine, things pick up here, with use of sequencers and lots of great themes. He also likes using spacy electronic effects in the music too. “Part IV” is no doubt the best known piece on the album, it was also released as a single, and it’s really catchy, little wonder the appeal of this album to people who might have been scared of electronic music previously. I can’t understand why “Part V” was one part, because it is essentially two different halves, the first part emphasizing droning in a more somber tone, while the second part is more lively. “Part VI” closes the album continuing on the lush spacy feel of the album, but here you hear the sounds of the ocean and seagulls (all electronically reproduced).

Of course, Jarre can also be easily dismissed as a lightweight compared with the likes of Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze, but compared to the likes of Kitaro, his music isn’t as soft. Some even call him New Age, but I don’t, just the lighter end of progressive electronic. He had a big impact on not just electronic music, but New Age, electronica, techno and dance music too.

I have lots of nostalgia with Oxygene, because my dad bought that album, as well as his 1978 followup Equinoxe in the early ’80s when I was a small kid, so those two albums were my first exposure to electronic music, but it took well over a decade for me to discover more (my dad never owned any Schulze or Tangerine Dream albums, so those had to be discovered myself).

But in my opinion, Oxygene is certainly one of the highlights of electronic music and since this album is common as dirt, you shouldn’t have trouble getting a copy. The production of this album is amazing, and this album, like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon would have been perfect for stereo dealers to use to test the equipment that they were to sell to the public at the time.

If you’re into electronic music, you probably already have this album, but if you’re curious about this kind of music, this would be a great place to start.