Oxygène

Oxygène (French pronunciation: ​[ɔksiˈʒɛn], English: Oxygen) is the third studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre and his first album not intended for use as a soundtrack. Oxygène consists of six tracks, numbered simply "Oxygène Part I" to "Part VI". It was first released in France in December 1976, on the Disques Dreyfus record label licensed to Polydor, with an international release following in the middle of 1977. The album reached number one on the French charts, number two on the UK charts and number 78 in the US charts.

For other uses, see Oxygene.
For the song by C418, see Minecraft - Volume Alpha.
Oxygène
Studio album by
Jean-Michel Jarre
Released5 December 1976
RecordedAugust–November 1976
StudioJean-Michel Jarre's home studio, Paris
Genre
Length39:41
LabelDisques Dreyfus/Polydor
ProducerJean-Michel Jarre
Jean-Michel Jarre chronology
Les Granges Brûlées
(1973)		 Oxygène
(1976)		 Équinoxe
(1978)
Singles from Oxygène
  1. "Oxygène (Part IV)"
    Released: July 1977 (UK)
  2. "Oxygène (Part II)"
    Released: 1977 (France)

Jarre recorded the album in a makeshift home recording studio using a variety of analogue synthesizers and one digital synthesizer, as well as other electronic instruments and effects. It became a bestseller and was Jarre's first album to achieve mainstream success. It was highly influential in the development of electronic music from that point onward and has been described as the album that "led the synthesizer revolution of the Seventies"[2] and "an infectious combination of bouncy, bubbling analog sequences and memorable hook lines".[3]

Recording
Korg Mini-Pops 7

Jarre composed and recorded Oxygène over a period of four months,[3] using limited equipment in a studio set up in his kitchen, his first synthesizer was an EMS VCS3, "which looked like a telephone exchange." and realized that "using a Revox tape machine to delay the sound coming out of a speaker created a great sense of space." Jarre stated in the magazine The Guardian that "in a way, I wanted to link everything to nature and environmental issues." Jarre used his old Mellotron which only had a few functional keys to write "Oxygène (Part II)". Oxygène (Part IV) mixed Rock and Slow rock while the sixth part mixed rumba with bossa nova.[4] The drum sounds on the album were produced using two presets simultaneously on a Korg Mini Pops drum machine.[5]

Artwork

The album cover was originally drawn for Pilote magazine in 1972, along with two other illustrations by Michel Granger. It was then exhibited in a Paris gallery between 1974 and 1975.[6] In 1976, Jarre saw the 30 cm × 40 cm (12" x 16") watercolour painting Oxygène at a Michel Granger exhibition. Jarre bought the painting and told Granger "he'd love to use it as an album cover". Granger said that "Oxygene was part of a series about the damage being done to our planet. It was a pretty violent image for a record cover." Granger later said:[4]

That picture is the best known of all my work. It's my Mona Lisa. But I don’t feel like it belongs to me any more. It belongs to anyone who loves the music of Jean-Michel Jarre.

Release

The album was rejected by multiple record labels,[4] yet Disques Dreyfus released the album on 5 December 1976.[7][8] The initial pressing was 50,000 copies,[9] but it is estimated that the album has sold 15 million copies,[4][10] it is currently estimated that a total of 18 million copies as of 2022.[11] In addition, two singles were released in 1977: Oxygene 2 and Oxygene 4 respectively. A sequel Oxygène 7–13 was released in 1997,[12] in 2007 a version of the original album Oxygène: New Master Recording was released and in 2016 another sequel titled Oxygène 3 was released, which caused the complete trilogy to be released consecutively that same year.[13]

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[14]
Record Mirror[15]

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. Angus MacKinnon of the NME described the album as "another interminable cosmic cruise. The German spacers Tangerine Dream, Schulze mapped this part of the electronic galaxy aeons ago. The album's infuriatingly derivative. Explore its prime influences instead."[16]

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."[17]

Karl Dallas of Melody Maker was kinder towards the album, saying that "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."[18] The most positive review came from Robin Smith of Record Mirror, in which he stated that "it's pretty tough to communicate warmth through such music and the end result is usually stilted but Jean-Michael Jarre has laid down a variety of forms joined together by cohesive lines".[15] A retrospective review by Jim Brenholts from AllMusic stated that it "is one of the original e-music albums" and that it "has withstood the test of time and the evolution of digital electronica."[14] The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[19]

Track listing

All tracks are composed by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Side one

  1. "Oxygène (Part I)" – 7:39
  2. "Oxygène (Part II)" – 7:49
  3. "Oxygène (Part III)" – 3:16

Side two

  1. "Oxygène (Part IV)" – 4:14
  2. "Oxygène (Part V)" – 10:23
  3. "Oxygène (Part VI)" – 6:20

Personnel
  • Produced by Jean-Michel Jarre
  • Engineered and mixed by Jean-Pierre Janiaud; assistant engineer: Patrick Foulon
  • Mastered by Translab

Equipment

Adapted from the liner notes of the 2014 remastered version.[20]

Charts

Certifications
Certifications for Oxygène
Region CertificationCertified units/sales
Australia (ARIA)[33] Platinum 50,000^
Canada (Music Canada)[34] Gold 50,000^
France (SNEP)[35] Gold 100,000*
Germany (BVMI)[36] Gold 250,000^
Poland (ZPAV)[37] Gold 10,000
United Kingdom (BPI)[38] Platinum 300,000^

* Sales figures based on certification alone.
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.
Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

Release history
Release history for Oxygène
Region Date Label Format Catalog
France 5 December 1976 Disques Motors/Polydor LP 2933 207
cassette 3222 215
Europe 1977 Polydor LP 2344 068
cassette 3100 398
United Kingdom July 1977 LP 2310 555
Cassette 3100 398
Germany 1983 CD 800 015-2
France 1985 Les Disques Motors LP MLP 1000
CD MCO 1000
United States 1994 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remastered LP MFSL 1-212
remastered CD UDCD 613
Europe 1997 Disques Dreyfus/Epic remastered CD 487375 2
cassette 487375 4
MiniDisc 487375 8
United Kingdom 15 March 1999 Simply Vinyl 180 gram vinyl LP SVLP 072
Europe 25 April 2014 Disques Dreyfus/BMG/Sony Music remastered CD 88843024682

See also

References
  1. Listed in "A Classic Space Music Countdown to Liftoff: 10 Essential classic space music albums, counting down from 10 to 1" Time Warped in Space by Echoes Radio producer and host, John Diliberto Archived 2007-04-07 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. Green, Thomas H. (27 March 2008). "Oxygene: ba-boo-boo beew". The Daily Telegraph. London, England. Retrieved 14 March 2009.
  3. Rule, Greg (1999). Electro Shock!: Groundbreakers of Synth Music. Backbeat Books. p. 238. ISBN 978-0-8793-0582-6.
  4. "Jean-Michel Jarre: how we made Oxygène". The Guardian. 16 October 2018. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  5. Hartenberger, Russell (2016). The Cambridge Companion to Percussion. Cambridge University Press. pp. 84–85. ISBN 978-1-10709-345-4.
  6. Baldacchino, Julien (18 January 2016). "Michel Granger : 'Le Trac', 'Oxygène' et les autres". Bav[Art]Dages (in French). Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  7. "45 Years Ago Oxygene Was Released!". Peek-A-Boo magazine. 5 December 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  8. "Le succès mondial d'Oxygène (1977)". Aerozone JMJ (in French). 30 November 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
  9. "'I Dream of Wires' and the legacy of the Modular Synthesizer". HMV. 3 January 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
  10. "Jean-Michel Jarre - "Oxygène" for the third time". eclipsed Rock Magazin (in German). 23 November 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
  11. "Oxygène : Le poème électronique de Jean-Michel Jarre". France Musique (in French). Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  12. Abecassis, Michaël; Block, Marcelline (11 June 2018). An Anthology of French and Francophone Singers from A to Z: "Singin' in French". Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 333. ISBN 978-1-5275-1205-4. Retrieved 8 April 2022.
  13. Pezzi, Davide (17 May 2021). Quello che le canzoni non dicono: Storie e segreti dietro alle nostre canzoni del cuore (in Italian). Youcanprint. ISBN 979-12-203-3446-4. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  14. Brenholts, Jim. "Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". AllMusic.
  15. Smith, Robin (30 July 1977). "Jean Michael Jarre – Oxygène". Record Mirror. p. 15.
  16. MacKinnon, Angus (27 August 1977). "Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". NME. p. 32.
  17. "Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". Music Week. 6 August 1977. p. 12.
  18. Dallas, Karl (3 September 1977). "Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". Melody Maker. p. 22.
  19. Dimery, Robert, ed. (5 December 2011). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Cassell Illustrated. ISBN 978-1-84403-714-8. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
  20. Oxygène (booklet). Disques Dreyfus. 2014. 88843024682.
  21. Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992. St Ives, NSW: Australian Chart Book. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.
  22. "Austriancharts.at – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  23. "Top RPM Albums: Issue 8275b". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved 18 February 2019.
  24. "Classements des albums par artistes (lettre J) (cliquer sur l'onglet Jean-Michel JARRE)". infodisc.fr. Retrieved 2 May 2014.
  25. "Offiziellecharts.de – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts.
  26. "Dutchcharts.nl – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  27. "Charts.nz – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". Hung Medien. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  28. "Norwegiancharts.com – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". Hung Medien. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  29. "Swedishcharts.com – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". Hung Medien. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  30. "Jean-Michel Jarre | Artist | Official Charts". UK Albums Chart. Retrieved 9 June 2014.
  31. "Jean-Michel Jarre Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard.
  32. "Top Albums 1977" (PDF). Music Week. 24 December 1977. p. 14. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 March 2021. Retrieved 30 November 2021 – via worldradiohistory.com.
  33. "Platinum and Gold Singles 1982". Kent Music Report. 28 February 1983. Retrieved 10 November 2021 – via Imgur.
  34. "Canadian album certifications – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". Music Canada.
  35. "French album certifications – J-Michel Jarre – Oxygène" (in French). InfoDisc. Select J-MICHEL JARRE and click OK. 
  36. "Gold-/Platin-Datenbank (Jean Michel Jarre; 'Oxygene')" (in German). Bundesverband Musikindustrie.
  37. "Wyróżnienia – Złote płyty CD - Archiwum - Przyznane w 2017 roku" (in Polish). Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  38. "British album certifications – Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène". British Phonographic Industry. Select albums in the Format field. Select Platinum in the Certification field. Type Oxygène in the "Search BPI Awards" field and then press Enter.
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