Karl Dallas of "Melody Maker" was kinder towards the album, saying: "The first time I heard this album I hated it. It seemed so bland, so undemanding, so uneventful... I've got to admit it repays further listening, and that it is not quite the electronic Muzak I had written it off as initially." The review noted that the album was composed in the same manner as classical music, rather than rock music, and concluded: "On the other hand, "Oxygène" is not classical music. Though the track the discos are playing to "Oxygène Part IV" is, as you might expect, actually its least effective section musically, it has the same relationship to popular music as Tangerine Dream, say, or Oldfield. Personally, it still does not impress me as much as either, except at a technical level. It seems to lack heart, the sense of passionate involvement in the act of music-making which makes Edgar Froese's work almost a musical equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting. It is almost too accomplished, too formally precise." The most positive review came from Robin Smith of "Record Mirror", who called the album "maybe the definitive synthesizer and mellotron masterpiece of '77. It's pretty tough to communicate warmth through such music and the end result is usually stilted but Jean Michael Jarre ["sic"] has laid down a variety of forms joined together by cohesive lines."