![]() Watch Jean-Michel Jarre play Oxygène (Part IV) live. If he has a signature tune, then it has to be Oxygène (Part IV) – an instantly recognisable hook that hitches a ride on a bossa nova beat in order to explore the galaxies. In fact, Jarre has shifted something in the region of 80m albums across his career, more than, say, Duran Duran, which is quite an achievement for a French solo artist who doesn’t sing. Oxygène went on to sell 14m copies, a remarkable feat when one considers some of the tracks are impressionistic experiments, full of space noise and static. It must have been a surprise then, when a third album recorded at home with an eight-track and some analogue synthesisers – Oxygène – made him an huge star shortly after it was released internationally in 1977. ![]() The Lyon-born musician had played guitar in a couple of bands, and released two electronic albums under his own name to little fanfare (including the soundtrack to the 1973 film Les Granges Brûlées). Jean-Michel André Jarre learned his trade under the giants of musical abstraction, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but it was when he decided to pepper his avant garde musings with strong flourishes of melody that things started to happen for him.
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