#oxygene

I'm totally lifting this from Wikipedia, but with regards to the album art, Jarre had some thoughts he shared in an interview:

"[The artwork] perfectly adheres to the spirit of the songs. 30 years ago there weren't so many people thinking about the planet. But I've always been interested in that, not necessarily in a political way but in a poetic, surrealistic way. In a way, I wanted to link everything to nature and environmental issues".

These 70's electronic albums are always so fascinating to me, because synthesizers back in the day used to be so technical. it wasn't enough to merely be a good musician, you needed to know advanced recording and audio engineering techniques to make anything approaching this level.

Jarre recorded this album in a makeshift studio in his apartment, using a whole arsenal of cutting edge keyboards, drum machines, and synthesizers. The effect is an expansive, grand sound that moves from theme to theme. The album just has one song, that's split up into six parts. Actually, this album is very similar to another album we've looked at, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (Review #6). Oxygène was compared unfavorably to Bells when it was first released actually, critics calling it derivative and lacking the heart of Oldfield's work.

To me, the two albums are different enough. Oldfield's feels more like rock, while Jarre's feels almost more like classical, I guess? Oxygène also features synthesized sounds exclusively, while Tubular Bells has guitar, piano, percussion, as well as synthesizer. Truthfully, I think I do like Tubular Bells a little better than Oxygène, but we're talking like eight stars out of ten vs. seven.

The overall vibe of the album is fairly melancholy, but punctuated with some groovier moments. Take a listen to Part 4 here. If you can believe it, this was a chart topper back in the day! As I said back in my Tubular Bells review, it's crazy that this kind of music reached mainstream appeal at any point, but 1976 was a different time.

Also, you NEED to see the music video. (Also my rip won't upload due to copyright boooooo)

You can see what I mean about these electronic artists needing to be almost more engineer than musician, right? Obviously, this is hammed up a little in the video for dramatic effect, but these people needed to have an intimate knowledge about how these machines worked. I feel that's something that's largely been lost with pre-programmed voice banks and modern audio production software. You used to have to get your hands dirty, man!