Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygène (1976)

May 13, 2022

Ah, Oxygène, one of the greats of the chill-out electronic genre, no? Before everything chilled out became house hi hats and moody loops, the genre was more attributed to “Mike Oldfield shit” – by which I mean huge 4 or 5 CD box sets of wishy washy hippy synthesizer music. You could guarantee a radio edit of Oxygène would be included on any one of those compilations worth its salt.

I am of course doing Monsieur Jarre a disservice, as I’m painting wide brush strokes with my own personal experience. The man is a genius of sorts, a composer for the modern age of synthesizer music. If you took what Tangerine Dream did and split it down into digestible chunks that have a little melody to them – and could be played at dinner parties – you’d be on the right track with regards to how Oxygène sounds. It’s spacey, but it’s grounded enough to impress your bougie friends. I mean this endearingly, of course. Lol.