OXYGÈNE

Jarre's recipe is stunningly simple. Take the melodic sensibilities of Tangerine Dream's Stratosphere, add the sonic texture of Schulze and inject everything with Kraftwerk's sense for catchy synth pop. The result he achieved is magnificent: it's a warm bath of lush analogue sounds that Schulze would be proud of and it is fired with clever compositions and a sequence of catchy hooks that Kraftwork will forever regret not claiming for themselves.

While the album is listed as Prog-Related, I regard it as a progressive electronic album and will also judge it as such. The conclusion is severe. There are a lot of excellent electronic pieces here (most notably part III and VI), but most of the music doesn't move me as much as Tangerine Dream and Schulze manage to. It misses the emotionality, the spontaneity and most of all the artistic vision and originality of those artists.

The album is a good introduction to electronic music, but to get really acquainted with the best of that genre you will need to let go of the need for catchy hooks that Jarre still overuses here. It makes the overall result too poppy and obvious. Real progressive electronic music is more organic and enigmatic. By consequence it's more demanding and ultimately more rewarding. I play this album once every 3 years or so. More would make me get really bored with it.

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