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Jean Michel Jarre
Oxygène
(Disques Motors, 1976)
Such is Jean Michel Jarre’s reputation as a tech-fixated perfectionist that it’s hard to believe that this 1976 breakthrough release could have been made on a simple old eight track, and yet it was, explaining the album’s warm yet minimalist sound. Jarre, who by ’76 had already followed his father Maurice’s footsteps with his soundtrack work, claims to have been influenced by Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring, jazz, world music and, somewhat less obviously, Ray Charles. Consequently Oxygène is a hybrid of free-floating, amorphous electronic sound and a pop nous exemplified by the album’s key track and single, Oxygène Part IV. The biggest selling French album of all time, it would pave the way for a singular career as well as the development of Gallic dance music 20 years later. PA
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