Male, British, ex-RAF. Is anyone else experiencing REALLY bad lag in the review text box at the mome...
Male, British, ex-RAF. Is anyone else experiencing REALLY bad lag in the review text box at the moment? Its so bad I have stopped writing & editing reviews completely. Can't Ciao fix this?
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I grew up listening to it in the mid to late 70's as my brother used to play it a great deal on his stereo and have fallen asleep to its dulcet tones many times.
It makes me think of Space, of orbiting the Earth (no wonder my friends think I'm weird) but its a classic in the electronic soundscape. Listen to modern bands like Air and you can really hear the very heavy influences of Jean-Michel Jarre's early work.
Lots of lesser informed people will tell you this is his first album which is simply not true, he'd already released Les Granges Brulees which was a film soundtrack for an Alain Delon film and Deserted Palaces but both of them are a lot more experimental than Oxygene. If you've heard of them then your a fan. If you own them (like I do) then your a very big fan!
Oxygene part 4 was released as a single (its video features penguins walking on ice) and reached number 4 in the UK charts in 1976, the same year as the album of Oxygene went on world wide release. Oxygene found a wide audience thanks to being adopted by various radio disc jockies, BBC Radio 1's own Peter Powell being one of its strongest supporters frequently using the single as backing music for things like the weekly chart run-down.
Oxygene is probably responsible for the birth of ambient or chill out music but Jarre was creating this stuff more than 20 years before the genre even evolved.
It's fair to say this album made Polydor a lot of money having only intially released only 50,000 copies as Francis Dreyfuss (who would go on to found his own record label thanks to the money he made off Oxygene) was unsure if electronic music like Jarre's would prove to be popular or not, it sold more than 15 million copies and helped Francis Dreyfuss going from working at Disques Motors to owning Disques Dreyfuss.
Jarre recorded the entire album playing all the instruments himself using an 8 track recorder in his own home using analogue synthesizers which have now become collectors items. It's still a classic album and should grace the shelves of anyone who considers themselves a fan of electronic or ambient music.
This review also appears on Dooyoo.
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Nov 22nd, 2008
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