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Oxygène (English: Oxygen) is an album of instrumental electronic music composed, produced, and performed by the French composer Jean Michel Jarre. It was first released in France in December 1976, on Disques Dreyfus with license to Polydor. The album's international release was in summer 1977. Jarre recorded the album in his home using a variety of analog synthesizers and other electronic instruments and effects. It became a bestseller and was Jarre's first album to achieve mainstream success. It was also highly influential in the development of electronic music and has been described as the album that "led the synthesizer revolution of the Seventies".
Background Prior to 1976, Jarre had dabbled in a number of projects, including an unsuccessful synthesizer music album, advertising jingles and compositions for a ballet. His inspiration for Oxygène came from a painting by the artist Michel Granger (given to Jarre by his future wife Charlotte Rampling), which showed the Earth peeling to reveal a skull. Jarre obtained the artist's permission to use the image for this 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. However, he found it difficult to get the record released, not least because it had "No singers, no proper titles, just 'I', 'II', 'III', 'IV', 'V' and 'VI'". The motif of the track "Oxygène Part IV" is a variation on a phrase from "Popcorn" by Gershon Kingsley, which Jarre himself had previously covered under the pseudonyms of "The Popcorn Orchestra" and "Jamie Jefferson". Jarre eventually found a publisher, 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 skeptical about electronic music, he gambled by pressing a run of 50,000 copies. The album went on to sell 15 million copies.
The album Oxygène consists of six tracks, numbered simply "Oxygène Part I" to "Part VI". Its sound has been described as "an infectious combination of bouncy, bubbling analog sequences and memorable hook lines". The album reached #1 in French charts, #2 in the UK charts and #78 in the US charts.
Critical reception Reaction to the album upon its release in the UK in July 1977 was largely negative: the British music press, more interested in the developing UK punk scene, was oriented towards guitar-based music and hostile to most electronic music. The NME derided Oxygène as "just another interminable cosmic cruise. The German spacers (Dream, Schulze et al) mapped this part of the electronic galaxy aeons ago... The album's [...] infuriatingly derivative. Explore its prime influences instead." Likening the album to a French version of Mike Oldfield's work, Music Week said: "Unfortunately Jarre has produced a work that is ponderous in its self-conscious musicality – he definitely wears his art on his sleeve. Unlike Oldfield he never stands back and laughs at his own creation. It is heavy throughout, and his influences continually jog the elbow – particularly the lugubrious touches of Mahler and the almost continuous Bach underpinning... some interest will be generated but the album is not really suited to our insular and musically anti-intellectual Anglo-Saxon island." Melody Maker was kinder towards the album, saying: "The first time I heard this album I hated it. It seemed so bland, so undemanding, so uneventful... I've got to admit it repays further listening, and that it is not quite the electronic Muzak I had written it off as initially." The review noted that the album was composed in the same manner as classical music, rather than rock music, and concluded: "On the other hand, Oxygène is not classical music. Though the track the discos are playing [referring to "Oxygène Part IV"] is, as you might expect, actually its least effective section musically, it has the same relationship to popular music as Tangerine Dream, say, or Oldfield. Personally, it still does not impress me as much as either, except at a technical level. It seems to lack heart, the sense of passionate involvement in the act of music-making which makes Edgar Froese's work almost a musical equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting. It is almost too accomplished, too formally precise." A more recent, retrospective, review by AllMusic's Jim Brenholts has given the album top ratings, calling it, "one of the original e-music albums." and that, "it has withstood the test of time and the evolution of digital electronica."
Track listing Side one No. Title Length 1. "Oxygène Part 1"   7:40 2. "Oxygène Part 2"   7:37 3. "Oxygène Part 3"   3:24 Side two No. Title Length 1. "Oxygène Part 4"   4:06 2. "Oxygène Part 5"   10:26 3. "Oxygène Part 6"   6:24
Personnel Jean Michel Jarre – ARP 2600, EMS Synthi AKS, EMS VCS3, RMI Harmonic Synthesizer, Farfisa Professional Organ, Eminent 310U, Mellotron and the Rhythmin' Computer (later revealed to be a Korg Minipops-7 rhythm machine)
Production Produced by Jean Michel Jarre Engineered and mixed by Jean-Pierre Janiaud; assistant engineer: Patrick Foulon Mastered by Translab
In popular culture "Oxygène Part II" was used in the original Chinese version of Jackie Chan's 1978 film Snake in the Eagle's Shadow (蛇形刁手)[10] and Peter Weir's 1981 film Gallipoli.[11] "Oxygène Part IV" was used in the closing scene of BBC Drama's Micro Men, a one-off docu-drama about the rise of the British home computer market. Segments of "Oxygene" were used as background music in the third and sixth fits of The first radio series of The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "Oxygène Part IV" was used in Grand Theft Auto IV, part of radio channel The Journey. "Oxygene Part IV" was also used in many arcade grabbers distributed by Elaut, using a short clip of the 'chorus' that is played at random intervals while the machine is active. Froo www.froo.com | Froo Cross Sell, Free Cross Sell, Cross promote, eBay Marketing, eBay listing Apps, eBay Apps, eBay Application