Aside from Oxygène being widely regarded as one of the landmarks of modern synth/ambient; this cassette marked my first introduction to electronic music. As a child I frequently lay in bed listening on my headphones long after I should have been asleep. Full of beautiful synth washes and panning echoes; the six parts gel into one another to form a continuous piece of music that still affects me with the same childlike wonder of over 20 years ago, though with added nostalgia this time around. If I'm around in another 50 years I'll still be listening to this, simultaneously embarrassing the wife and entertaining the grandkids with some amusing grandad dance moves.

This album catapaulted Jean Michel Jarre onto the international stage and into most electronic music listeners' record collections. Brilliant use of technology to produce haunting bubbles of sound, driving melodic lines, and deep organ-like resonances all interweave to produce an album of surprising complexity. It also stands up to repeated listening very well. As an introduction to electronic music, this has few betters.

This LP from 1976 (!) is a good example for how much ahead of it's time Jean Michel Jarre always was. Not only because of the wonderfull synthy melodies of Oxygen II and IV, which for sure everybody has already has heard somewhere. I also find a second thing interessting: This is somehow the oldest electronic mixed album I own, since all the Tracks merge into
another and you can not exactly tell where exactly one is meant to end and the other to begin.

This is the album that first got me started into electronic music, the indication that this was what turned me on. While it is slightly dated, it is still one of the classics and should be listened to (apart from the rather dull track 3) from end to end as a mental and spiritual journey. Jarre's mastery of the classic technology of the analog era makes this the inspiration for many other artists - you can trace a lot of psychedelic trance's synth sweeps and ring modulations back to this album.

Highly recommended.

Oxygene is JM's first success album. In France, we heard it in many tv advertisement, and as the tv news generic.

This album is the result of the first JM's experimentations with synth. His first attempt was Deserted Palace (1972), in which he only used two synth : one Farfisa organ and one EMS VCS3. The Track "Windswept Canyon" sounds like an outline of Oxygene's style.

The use of stereo and panoramic effects in Oxygene has revolutioned electronic music, and it has imposed a very different style for the experimental musicians of the 70's.

The sound of the Eminent organ through the phasing Small Stone, effects on the VCS3 and AKS, the deep basses of the ARP 2600, hybrid sounds of the RMI, the band echoes of the Revox... This is the definite proof of the evocation potential of the synths. And JM uses their sound as a poetic instrument, evoquing reality through a sensual and human filter.

Definitely a must have for electronic music lovers !