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May 31, 2008  I recently bought Jean Michel Jarre's 30th Anniversary Oxygene: New Master Recording and find that the set, while interesting, is not entirely successful. Oxygene is an iconic 1977 album in the field of 70s progressive Euro instrumentalism, a genre also occupied by Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, and Tangerine Dream, to name a few. Its most famous bit, "Oxygene IV," is a jaunty synth number that, while not instantly familiar in America, has popped up all over the place for the last thirty years, including in GTA IV. For the 30th anniversary, Jarre, who is the son of Lawrence of Arabia composer Maurice Jarre, recreated the entire album: every blip, every wind noise, every synth voice, and every arpeggio sound (almost) exactly like that on the old recording, and were allegedly created with the original instruments. Of course, the new recording is a bit meatier because it was recorded with modern equipment. For true fans, Jarre has also included a DVD that contains a "live" studio performance of Oxygene by Jean Michel and his buddies, as well as a surround mix of the album. The Oxygene 30th Anniversary project owes more than a little to Mike Oldfield's very similar recreation of his legendary Tubular Bells, which Oldfield did for its 30th anniversary in 2003. I always suspected the Oldfield project was inspired mainly by record company feuding; Oldfield famously hated Richard Branson and Virgin, with whom he signed a bad 13-album deal to get the original Tubular Bells released in 1973, and making an entirely new Tubular Bells master seemingly gave his new record company a way to sell the old album without violating Virgin's license on the sound recording. Similarly, Jarre has switched labels and may have been looking for a way to get sales of his most famous album--and perennial back catalog favorite--into his new deal. But what's also interesting is the way the two artists tried to recapture the successes of their most famous albums in the 90s before cynically giving up and simply recreating the original albums in their entirety. As I have described before, Oldfield did Tubular Bells 2 and Tubular Bells III in 1992 and 1998, respectively. Jarre, for his part, did Oxygene 7-14 in 1997. In Oldfield's case, the Tubular Bells sequels were attempts to completely rework the original with more modern styles, and revitalized his career after a couple pretty bad would-be pop records at the end of his Virgin deal. For Jarre, Oxygene 7-14 was a return to form after some rather crappy DX7-sounding new age albums. In my opinion, the sequel projects were vastly preferable to the "recreation" projects, because they showcased the artists doing interesting things. Counting these recreations as new albums is a bit dissonant to me, because there's not much fun in sitting around trying to spot the subtle differences between the originals and the re-recordings. For Tubular Bells 2003, Oldfield added some obvious digital junk--especially near the end of Part I--that sucked, but at least it gave the fan something to listen for. Oxygene is even less interesting because it is faithful to the original to a fault. |