Reaction to the album upon its release in the UK in July 1977 was largely negative: the British music press, more interested in the developing UK punk scene, was oriented towards guitar-based music and hostile to most electronic music. Angus MacKinnon of the "NME" derided "Oxygène" as "just another interminable cosmic cruise. The German spacers (, Schulze et al) mapped this part of the electronic galaxy aeons ago... The album's [...] infuriatingly derivative. Explore its prime influences instead." Likening the album to a French version of Mike Oldfield's work, "Music Week" said: "Unfortunately Jarre has produced a work that is ponderous in its self-conscious musicality – he definitely wears his art on his sleeve. Unlike Oldfield he never stands back and laughs at his own creation. It is heavy throughout, and his influences continually jog the elbow – particularly the lugubrious touches of Mahler and the almost continuous Bach underpinning... some interest will be generated but the album is not really suited to our insular and musically anti-intellectual Anglo-Saxon island."