You are here

Oxygène: Live in your living-room

2007
  1. Prelude
  2. Oxygène (part I)
  3. Oxygène (part II)
  4. Oxygène (part III)
  5. Variation I
  6. Oxygène (part IV)
  7. Variation II
  8. Oxygène (part V)
  9. Variation III
  10. Oxygène (part VI)

Due to Oxygène's 30th anniversary, French musician Jean Michel Jarre published in 2007 Oxygène: live in your living-room. It is a reinterpretation of his most famous album, using the original analog synthesizers from 1976, and it was recorded on video in the Alfacam Studios (Lint, Belgium). The idea behind the project was to take the playing and recording, live, of a classical masterpiece, into everybody's living-room: it is almost like a private concert. For the immersion to be complete, stereoscopic 3D cameras and surround sound were used. Playing with Jarre were his collaborators Francis Rimbert, Claude Sammard and Dominique Perrier: eight hands to play music originally recorded using an 8-track console.

But the most interesting aspect for music-lovers was that, besides the six themes that formed the original album, Jarre arranged four new themes. Played with the same analog instruments, and using the same compositional style than the 1976 pieces, this new themes fit perfectly in the whole.

Unlike Jarre's mega-concerts, this Oxygène: live in your living-room shows a more intimate and calmed Jean Michel, focused on interpretation and not in cameras, moving from one synthesizer to another, like a cook among sonic stoves, adding layers of sounds and sequences, adjusting filters and mixers. The representation might look like a Kraftwerk concert, but this music, although produced by machines, too, is warm and surrounding.

In addition, the video will please to those interested in gears, since Jarre unfolds the whole arsenal of 'old ladies': analog synthesizers as classic and recognizable as the Arp 2600, the Eminent 310, the EMS AKS and VCS3 or the Mellotron.

This commemorative edition of Oxygène was released in three formats: a 3D dvd, including also a 'New Master Recording' of the original 6-parts Oxygène in 5.1; a 2D dvd and the same cd, and a single edition only with the musical album. However, the same year, Francis Dreyfus Music, owner of the original Oxygène rights, threatened with legal actions against EMI, claiming that the content of the cd was not a genuine new master recording.

More by this artist