The polyphonic oui

At the time of its release in 1977, Jean Michel Jarre’s electronic opus Oxygene, was groundbreaking in several respects. Highly experimental and entirely instrumental, it utilised what were then cutting-edge analogue synthesizers and keyboards. It also sold in the millions, with a single, the spacey ‘Oxygene Part 1V’ hitting number four in the UK charts. It’s worth noting that this was against the backdrop of the punk explosion, the disco phenomenon and the huge popularity of the West Coast soft rock of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac.

Of course, within a few years electronic music was everywhere, with bands such as The Human League, Depeche Mode and New Order taking it into the pop domain, while in the ‘90s dance music and techno in particular, fully embraced electronic forms. More recently, bands like Air have cited Jarre as a major influence.
“Everyone is doing electronic music these days, but it wasn’t so common back when I started,” Jarre explains, over the phone en route to a concert in Milan. “At times I felt isolated and completely apart from almost everything else. But I always had a dream in one corner of my mind to try to create a bridge between experimental and pop music. To me, electronic music was not just a style or a fashion but a way of thinking and of composing music in a different way. I studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen – the father of electronic music – and I was influenced by the notion that music is not made of notes but of sounds.”
The pioneering Frenchman certainly deserves much of the credit for taking his non-traditional sonics to a wider audience, though he insists his wasn’t the first commercial success of the genre.
“The first album that made electronic music popular was released in the 1960s,” he explains. “It was called Switched On Bach by Walter Carlos [who later became Wendy Carlos, following a sex-change]. Later he did the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, but with this album he was using modular Moogs to perform Johan Sebastian Bach music. But even then the synthesizer was seen as a fake instrument with a kind of a novelty sound. Then bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream came along and combined electronic textures with a kind of robotic rhythm and they did it brilliantly. I wanted to do something else again. I was obsessed at that time with the notion that I shouldn’t repeat sequences and that they should be impressionistic.”
Oxygene was the culmination of more than a decade of exploration in which Jarre served time in various bands, and even wrote songs for French chanteuse François Hardy. He was introduced to the first generation of Moog synthesisers in the late '60s and began a lifelong love affair with electronic music. Still, he insists the success of Oxygene was unexpected when it came.
“When you think about it now, it was an album where you have no singer, no real songs and the tracks don’t even have proper titles,” he proffers. “I remember my mum being annoyed with me and asking me why was I calling my music after the name of a gas!”
The follow up album, Equinox was equally successful and Jarre became known for his live spectaculars featuring laser displays and fireworks, often performing before audiences as high as several million landing him in the Guinness Book Of Records no less than three times. Now to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his breakthrough album he has re-recorded Oxygene live in the studio for both CD and surround sound DVD. Jarre will be performing it in its entirely in a selection of more intimate venues including two nights at Dublin’s National Concert Hall.
“When I first did Oxygene I did it very basically with an old 8-track tape machine,” he recalls. “I always felt frustrated to be confined to stereo but now with the explosion of high-definition surround sound I was able to take all the instruments and put them in the studio. I realised just how unique they were – they are like the Stradivarius or the Fenders of the electronic world. They have such incredible texture but with no memories or presets like today’s computers and that's the reason for this tour in small venues. I keep it analogue all the time. It’s a plug in and play experience.
“They are also a nightmare to transport and to set up,” he adds. “A mellotron weighs 400 kilos. One of my guys in charge of setting them up uses hair-dryers to get the bulbs and valves warmed up before the show.
“But it’s fun to revisit something like this. At the end of the day any artist has just one thing to say even though the media are constantly forcing you to say something new all the time. This concept is purely Oxygene and nothing else.”

Jean Michel Jarre performs Oxygene at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on March 18 and 19.