Released: 1977
Talking about synthesizers for most of the 1970’s usually prompted images of Brian Eno, a cape-wearing Rick Wakeman, or Kraftwerk’s android ballet. Expensive, unreliable, complicated to use and requiring endless patience from which to achieve results, for anyone without access to a studio and plenty of cash the idea of playing one on a record may as well have been a trip to the moon.
Jean-Michel Jarre was originally an painter who began to experiment with tape loops and other sinewave witchcraft, then joining the experimental Parisian collective Groupe de Recherches Musicale. Later setting up at home he would release two solo albums before nailing his intended sound with Oxygene, the concept a series of lengthy beatless instrumentals without a root chord in earshot.
This gallic heresy meant that Oxygene was critically panned on release in Britain, but one of it’s briefest tracks was cannily released as a single and in a surprising twist it punted Jarre into the upper reaches of the charts. Real musicians sneered, but what could at face value have been dismissed as a novelty had an unintended but gigantic ripple effect still felt today, it’s influence for example still being heard decades later on everything from Aphex Twin to Air. Rick Wakeman could not be reached for comment.
The Voice Of Unreason 