Oxygène 3

In the transition between late 2016 and early 2017, the record market saw the simultaneous release of albums by the three most popular names in 20th-century instrumental music: Rosetta by Vangelis, Oxygene 3 by Jean-Michel Jarre, and Return to Ommadawn by Mike Oldfield.

For all three artists, these works represented a return—either stylistic or conceptual—to earlier albums highly regarded by their followers, which naturally raised great expectations. Of the three, it was Jarre who took the biggest risk with his proposal, and therefore his album was the one that most divided critics.

The French musician had just released the two volumes of Electronica and completed an extensive concert tour when he began to consider the possibility of commemorating a very special anniversary: the 40th anniversary of the release of his first and most successful work, Oxygène (1976). To do so, he decided, in his own words, to impose upon himself the same time limit under which he had composed the original—six weeks—to recapture the minimalism of the eight-track setup and take the listener on a journey from beginning to end, divided into several chapters.

Thus, Oxygene 3 is not intended to be a remake of the original—nor was Oxygene 7–13—nor a continuation, but rather a new vision of the same ecological concept. To achieve this, Jarre used some of his classic synthesizers, such as the Eminent 310, the VCS3, and the Mini Pops drum machine. However, he combined them with far more contemporary sequences and acidic leads more typical of dance music. In sonic terms, where Oxygène was innovative, Oxygene 3 is quite conservative, firmly tied to a specific time and electronic style—something that will likely make it age more quickly and not as gracefully.

Structurally, the different tracks alternate between more ambient passages (“Oxygene 15”, “Oxygene 18”) and others closer to a percussionless trance (“Oxygene 19”), before closing with a beautiful adagio (“Oxygene 20”) that carries the same melancholic tone permeating the entire album.

Throughout the record, the melodies are only sketched out—they never fully develop, or when they do, they are overly simple. Not even the lead single, “Oxygene 17”, proves as memorable as “Oxygene 8” (let alone “Oxygene 4”). Jarre’s decision to forgo strong melodies—one of the defining traits of his music—is a risky choice, but it gives Oxygene 3 a much more atmospheric character than its predecessor, bringing it closer in spirit to the 1976 original, alongside other well-integrated nods to it.

But the greatest problem with Oxygene 3 is that its title is too ambitious. The issue is that in 1976, no one had done what Jarre did with Oxygène, and in 2017, creating an electronic music album capable of surprising listeners is not something that can be achieved in six weeks. The sounds and melodies in this third chapter are not as refined as one would expect from a musician of Jarre’s caliber: whether deliberate or not, at times it feels like listening to the demo of the album it could—and should—have been. From the start, this was an impossible project, one unlikely to meet the expectations surrounding it; nevertheless, Jarre deserves credit for refusing to repeat old formulas and for taking the risk of doing something different. Without a doubt, with a different title, this music would be judged in a very different light.