As essential as the air we breathe

March 24, 2018 6:28 PM

Working in a home studio by himself, Jean-Michel Jarre crafted 1976's synthesizer masterpiece, Oxygène [YT album, ~40m]. The sides on the vinyl are hard to break apart, so here it is as originally presented: Side 1 (Oxygène Part I, Oxygène Part II, Oxygène Part III), Side 2 (Oxygène Part IV, Oxygène Part V, Oxygène Part VI)
posted by hippybear (28 comments total)

Thanks for posting, this is one of my favorite albums. There are also two sequels!
posted by Naib at 6:32 PM on March 24, 2018

Despite being older than God's dog I only know JMJ by repute and this tune indirectly via The Orb's '90s classic Toxygene. Will check it out, cheers.
Also I'm noticing a lot of older music posts on here and long may they continue, be they to my taste or otherwise.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 6:52 PM on March 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

First album I ever asked for from my parents and I think I got it for Christmas (1977). Best gift ever! Best part, side 1, 5:08. I used to pronounce his name Gene Michael Jerry until college when I met a french dude who politely corrected me.
posted by Increase at 6:58 PM on March 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

For some reason my fairly conservative evangelical christian dad had all these albums around in an old crate of records. The covers were super evocative, even though I’d never heard them. We didn’t have a turntable until I bought one in my late teens (ours must’ve busted when I was quite young, and just wasn’t ever replaced). Like some people have stories about metal band covers, for me these were the first peek into...any kind of off the beaten path music culture at all.

I inherited that crate, and really the only that I ended up keeping were these records and all his Al Stewart LPs. Everything else was pretty bad christian music, or pop that was acceptably similar. I listened to them for the first time just right before I hit college, and they we’re so unlike anything I’d heard up until that point, my brain didn’t even know what to do with the sounds. They slowly worked into my regular rotation and were always one of those albums I’d put on to compete with music nerds wherever I worked to prove I knew some shit too (I have long given up trying to impress on this front). I got a really good tip once working at a cafe playing this album. The guy was my dads age, and really stoked that I had the album on. We had a quick chat about it, and since I worked a closing shift, we just sat and kind of jammed out to this album.

I’ll be busting these out tomorrow to give them a listen. It’s been a few years since they were in the rotation. Thanks for the reminder!
posted by furnace.heart at 7:06 PM on March 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this! I had not listened to JMJ for more than 25 years. Until today I had no idea how this record was made, I am impressed.

I am playing it at the moment. Just like my dad used to do in 1980, I am playing it through the analog stereo receiver and the living room speakers. It took a lot of fidgeting, but the speakers are one foot from the walls, the tweeter domes are at the same height as my ears, and my chair makes an equilateral triangle with the speakers.

In 6th grade, in 1980, I went from just a bit unpopular to most unpopular the day one of the popular girls picked up my yellow sports Walkman and listened to like 15 seconds of Oxygène. The weirdo reputation followed me for years.

Anyone else remember worrying about how much battery was left in the Walkman? Not enough battery for casual listen, every playback had to count.
posted by Index Librorum Prohibitorum at 7:20 PM on March 24, 2018

Can't mention JMJ without including Tubular Bells.
posted by SPrintF at 7:35 PM on March 24, 2018

Tubular Bells is Mike Oldfield.
posted by hippybear at 7:41 PM on March 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

I fell in love with music for the first time when I heard this album at 13, and now I am an (amateur, but serious) musician. Before that I thought the only options were pop, rock, or classical.

This led me to Mike Oldfield's instrumental music, which is mostly done on guitars and other analog instruments.

Interestingly, YouTube just auto-played a live JMJ performance video from recent years, and he sounds A LOT like Mike Oldfield's live music from the last 15 years or so.
posted by twoplussix at 7:54 PM on March 24, 2018

Damn, this album is made of pure madeleine extract or what? I am listening and having whole body memories of 1980.

I had a blue and grey Walkman in 1980. Actually my dad had, I was not supposed to take it to school. I got the yellow sports one years later.

1980 or 81. Easter holiday camping at the beach. Me and my sister the only kids, everyone else friends of my parents on a scuba trip.

I was practicing being dark and intense, which I thought was what one had to do at 13.

Sunset, on my last pack of batteries, listening to weird French synth music on my headphones, waiting for my dad an his friends to come out of the sea with the daily haul of lobster and shellfish (it was another time).

I would close my eyes and try to picture the face of the girl with the loveliest eyes I had ever seen, the daugther of some people that were staying in a nearby RV park. I would picture her face until I was full to bursting of the purest love and joy I could contain (remember I was 12).

Then I would open my eyes and see how long I could hold that feeling while looking and smelling seagulls eating rotting fish guts on the beach. I wanted to find out if love could triumph over death and decay (remember I was alsmot 13).

And what does this music have to do with anything? It gave me something to look forwards too. Even if love was an illusion and we all die at the end, there is some pretty cool music to listen to, and who knows how good synthetizers will get in the distant future, like the year two thousand or something.
posted by Index Librorum Prohibitorum at 8:06 PM on March 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

Back in the late 70's A local TV station (BCTV) used to use the portion from 10:00 on Side 1 for their late night movie theme. As a shift worker who got home from work just as the movies started, I heard it many times and finally bought the album. I still have it. As others have mentioned, I recorded the album onto cassette and played it in my car and my WM-2 Walkman. Still have that too (the Walkman not the car).
posted by Zedcaster at 8:09 PM on March 24, 2018

And one should mention, he's on tour. I'm going!
posted by Tad Naff at 8:25 PM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is what the Walkman was made for, clearly
posted by twoplussix at 9:49 PM on March 24, 2018

Anyone want to go with me to the San Jose show on April 15th ? Memail me.
posted by twoplussix at 9:52 PM on March 24, 2018

I hadn't thought about this in a long, long time. Thanks sincerely, hippybear.
posted by ob1quixote at 11:29 PM on March 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Jesus, the reviews in the 'critical reception' section of that Wikipedia link. The British music press really had their heads up their own arses.
posted by kersplunk at 5:13 AM on March 25, 2018

Thanks for this. Reminds me of very steamy nights when I was working in Houston many eons ago. "Equinoxe" was also very popular around that time. His work is timeless.
posted by james33 at 5:14 AM on March 25, 2018

My grandfather's teslescopes, and books of astronomy. Pictures of space stations, the toroidal suburbs stretching up into the horizon. Heavy Metal magazine. And this album in heavy rotation.

I think the thing I am most bitter about is the incredibly shitty future I am living in compared to the one that seemed so inevitable in 1979. Gay Space Communism is not just some recent meme, it was exactly what we were promised.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:31 AM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

And then came samplers.
posted by flabdablet at 6:44 AM on March 25, 2018

There’s more.

Oxygene parts 7-13 (1997)

Oxygene parts 14-20 (2016)

Plus of course the rest of his catalog. I used to love Zoolook until I used the title track for my animation school demo reel and now it is inextricably tied up with memories of the pencil test machine.
posted by egypturnash at 9:56 AM on March 25, 2018

'Gene Micheal Jerry' is my laugh for the day. From now on, I will refer to him as such.
posted by parki at 5:43 PM on March 25, 2018

I had two tapes I listened to on my 6th grade paper delivery route in 1987. One was Oxygene with Invisible Touch on the flip side, the other had Equinoxe and something else.

The stark iciness of Oxygene was always sort of a treat on bitterly cold Wisconsin mornings although it usually made my walkman die halfway through the route and all I got to listen to on the back half was my tires crunching through the snow.
posted by Kyol at 8:15 PM on March 25, 2018

I really dig Oxygene, but the synth joy that is Fourth Rendezvous will always be my best JMJ track.
posted by PenDevil at 1:38 AM on March 26, 2018

Can't mention JMJ without including Tubular Bells

Tubular Bells is Mike Oldfield.

And they're both charter members of the Pure Moods Club. As was Karl Jenkins.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 7:08 AM on March 26, 2018

As wasn't Tangerine Dream.
posted by flabdablet at 7:20 AM on March 26, 2018

I kinda wish he'd go back and revisit Équinoxe which is somewhat my favorite of those first two epochal albums, but I guess Oxygène's kinda special to him.

Is his recent stuff any good? I was a fan for a long, long time but drifted away after Métamorphoses, which really didn't grab me.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:52 PM on March 26, 2018

I sort of like both of the recent Electronica albums, although how much JMJ influence any track had is sort of debatable.

Like, just going by my personal play counts, Vince Clarke, Little Boots, Gesaffelstein, Laurie Anderson (which feels like a natural extension of the work she did with him on Zoolook), Pet Shop Boys, and Peaches are all interesting enough to stand out.
posted by Kyol at 1:56 PM on March 26, 2018

From his more recent stuff, I think Téo and Téa (2007) is goofy fun. It has very mixed reviews; apparently Jarre doesn’t like it much in retrospect either. I do, it’s super tacky at times (god that one track full of sampled moans), it really doesn’t take itself seriously at all. And it makes me want to shake my ass and laugh at the same time.

Which I suppose is a major letdown if you want to sit quietly and appreciate a Master Performance of a Synthesized Symphony, but sometimes you gotta party, too.

Bonus: lots of drama about it including some drum patterns straight out of a drum machine’s default programs... when he was one of the people who helped build its defaults.
posted by egypturnash at 6:01 PM on March 26, 2018

As a Houstonian, it's important for me to drop this link into any conversation about Jarre. :)

See Also.
posted by uberchet at 11:09 AM on April 2, 2018