BlahBlahCafe - Jean-Michel Jarre forum

If you’ve seen the World War I film, Gallipoli, or have played Grand Theft Auto IV extensively, then you would’ve heard some of the music from Oxygène. The second and fourth tracks appeared in those works, respectively, and appropriately so, because the music here is uniquely cinematic, hypnotic, and atmospheric, feeling almost like the score to the best science fiction film that doesn’t exist.

And maybe that’s appropriate, considering the father of Jean-Michel Jarre was composer Maurice Jarre, who did some amazing film scores in his time, including Lawrence of Arabia. Oxygène, though, is a good deal more electronic and new-agey, and could well have sounded just a bit too weird for some back in 1976, before electronic sounds kind of took over pop music (thanks to new wave and synth-pop). But Oxygène sounds amazing today, and the reviewers from back in the day seem like they just didn’t get it at the time.