Octo_Russ

Jean Michel Jarre [Oxygene] 

I don't get to play this disc all that often, but when i do i just think it's simply stunning, i really get into it, i always get an idea what it's going to sound like, but when i put it on the realness of the sounds always outdo my expectations, like a firework that explodes louder than you can ever imagine it, and on this record Jarre creates the perfect blend of eerie sounds, with the hummable melodies of Pop, without falling into sillyness, after all this time it still sounds very 'adult', and yet is a length which can easily be digested in one listen.

Jean Michel Jarre is of course French, he's now 63 years old, doesn't seem possible, he was only 28 when he composed this masterpiece, this is a digitally re-mastered copy i have, and certainly the sound is absolutely fantastic, also the album art is re-done to a high standard, the album even came free with a newspaper recently, the front cover is a painting by Michel Granger, of the planet earth, seemingly a living tissue, and underneath a skull [what does it mean?], but it's an iconic picture that conjures up a hidden world beneath the one we're living on.

The opening is just tremendous, like rotating worlds, over ghostly mystery, really affecting, but on this listen i found Part 5 to be very special, and part 5 can be split into two halves, the first sounds like something out of Bach's Organ Music, or Albinoni / Tomasi's Adagio, but it's the second half which i found stunning, it fades / blends in with the first half [5:17+], a very bubbly dance track, starts of with a catchy rhythm, sounding like woodblocks, but it's the swirling synthesizer that comes in a minute later that makes the track [6:38+], like an organ played high in the treble, especially those high swirls, it's quite mesmerizing, until the wave breaks and the seagulls come in for Part 6, the whole album is groundbreaking, i don't believe Jarre ever bettered this masterpiece. 

Here's Jean Michel Jarre playing Oxygene 5 on YouTube.