Oxygène

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Oxygène
Oxygène cover
Studio album by Jean Michel Jarre
Released 1976
Recorded August 1976 – November 1976
Genre Electronic, New Age, ambient
Length 39:44
Label Disques Dreyfus
Producer Jean Michel Jarre
Professional reviews
Jean Michel Jarre chronology
Les Granges Brûlées
(1973)		 Oxygène
(1976)		 Equinoxe
(1978)

Oxygène is an album of instrumental electronic music composed, produced, and performed by the French composer Jean Michel Jarre. It was released in 1976 on Disques Dreyfus, licensed to Polydor. Jarre recorded the album in his home using a variety of analog synthesizers and other electronic instruments and effects. It became a bestseller and a highly influential development in electronic music, and has been described as the album that "led the synthesizer revolution of the Seventies."[2]

Contents

[edit] History

Prior to 1976, Jarre had dabbled in a number of projects, including an unsuccessful synth album, advertising jingles and compositions for a ballet. His inspiration for Oxygène came from a painting by the artist Michel Granger that showed the Earth peeling to reveal a skull and obtained the artist's permission to use the image for his latest album.

Jarre composed Oxygène over a period of eight months using a number of analogue synthesizers and an eight-track recorder set up in the kitchen of his apartment.[3] However, he found it difficult to get the record released, not least because it had "No singers, no proper [track] titles, just 'I', 'II', 'III', 'IV', 'V' and 'VI'".[2]

He eventually found a publisher in the shape of Francis Dreyfus, head of Disques Motors (now Disques Dreyfus). Dreyfus was the husband of one of Jarre's fellow-pupils at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales of Pierre Schaeffer, where Jarre had learned to use synthesizers including the EMS VCS 3 which was to play a major part in the music of Oxygène. Although Dreyfus was initially sceptical of electronic music, he gambled by pressing a run of 50,000 copies. The album went on to sell 15 million copies.[2]

In 1997, Jarre produced a sequel album called Oxygene 7–13.[4] This refers to the original album as being the first six movements from a larger complete piece of work, despite the time difference between the release of the two albums. It was written in the same style and using some of the same instruments although the work is much more uptempo. Jarre was clear about not trying to copy the mood or atmosphere from the original album, but using the same work approach to "create a mood later".

In 2007, Jarre produced a new version of the album, recorded live on a stage (but with no audience) for a DVD release that included 3D video. The title of the new DVD CD set is Oxygene: New Master Recording.[4] He used the same instruments, but performed the work with three other collaborators (Dominique Perrier, Francis Rimbert and Claude Samard), rather than overdubbing all parts himself.

[edit] The album

Oxygène consists of six tracks, numbered simply Oxygène Part I to VI. Its sound has been described as "an infectious combination of bouncy, bubbling analog sequences and memorable hook lines."[3]

Contrasted with its contemporaries, such as the rather 'clinical', hard, futuristic sound of Kraftwerk's early music or the more 'cosmic' and murky Tangerine Dream, Oxygène has a lush, spacey and strongly melodic sound.

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Oxygène (Part I)" – 7:40
  2. "Oxygène (Part II)" – 8:04
  3. "Oxygène (Part III)" – 2:58
  4. "Oxygène (Part IV)" – 4:07
  5. "Oxygène (Part V)" – 10:31
  6. "Oxygène (Part VI)" – 6:19

[edit] Usage elsewhere

The track Oxygène (Part II) was used in the Australian film Gallipoli to accompany the crucial running sequences.[5]

Parts of the album were used as incidental music for the original radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[6]

Key components of Jarre's sound included his use of the Electroharmonix Small Stone phaser on synthetic string pads provided by the Dutch-built Eminent-310 Unique organ, and liberal use of echo on various sound effects generated by the VCS 3 and EMS Synthi AKS synthesizers.

Segments of the album Oxygene can be heard in many amusement arcades across the United Kingdom (notably in "Elaut" machines)

The album reached #2 in the UK charts and #78 in the US charts [7]

Oxygène (Part IV) features in the game Grand Theft Auto IV on an in-game radio station, The Journey.

Oxygène (Part IV) also appears in UK comedy series Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge's second episode as magician Tony LeMesmer (David Schneider) performs a magic trick on Alan's show.

[edit] Personnel

  • Jean Michel Jarre – ARP Synthesizer, EMS Synthi AKS, VCS 3 Synthesizer, RMI Harmonic Synthesizer, Farfisa Professional Organ, Eminent, Mellotron and the Rhythmin' Computer (later revealed to be a Korg Minipops-7 rhythm machine)

[edit] References

  1. ^ All Music Review.
  2. ^ a b c Thomas H Green, "Oxygène: ba-boo-boo beew". Daily Telegraph, 27 March 2008
  3. ^ a b Greg Rule, Electro Shock!: Groundbreakers of Synth Music, p. 238. Backbeat Books, 1999. ISBN 0879305827
  4. ^ a b Mark Edwards, "Jean Michel Jarre's return to planet Oxygene". The Times, 16 March 2008
  5. ^ Jonathan Rayner, The Films of Peter Weir, p. 134. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003. ISBN 0826415350
  6. ^ The Music of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. h2g2. bbc.co.uk. Retrieved on 2008-04-14. “The author say the source is "This information comes from the original radio series script book."”
  7. ^ Oxygene Review.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Jean-Michel Jarre
Albums
Deserted Palace (1972) · Les Granges Brûlées (1973) · Oxygène (1976 in France, 1977 worldwide) · Equinoxe (1978) · Magnetic Fields (Les Chants Magnétiques) (1981) · Music for Supermarkets (Musique pour Supermarchés) (1983) · Zoolook (1984) · Rendez-Vous (1986) · Revolutions (1988) · Waiting for Cousteau (En attendant Cousteau) (1990) · Chronologie (1993) · Oxygene 7–13 (1997) · Metamorphoses (2000) · Interior Music (2001) · Sessions 2000 (2002) · Geometry of Love (2003) · Téo & Téa (2007) · Oxygene: New Master Recording (2007)
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