Jarre recorded the album in a makeshift studio that he set up in his apartment in Paris, using a variety of analog and digital synthesizers, and other electronic instruments and effects.

French sound engineer Michel Geiss helped Jarre in the purchase, recording and programming of some instruments used on the album.

Oxygène has been described as the album that "led the synthesizer revolution of the Seventies"[5] and "an infectious combination of bouncy, bubbling analog sequences and memorable hook lines".

In 1978, it would be followed by Équinoxe and in 1979, Jarre held an open-air concert at the Place de la Concorde, causing the sales of both albums to increase, reaching worldwide figures of 15 million copies.

In 1967 Jarre travelled to London to sell his electric guitar and amplifier to be able to buy his first synthesizer, an EMS VCS 3 (one of the first units of the instrument), which he used on many of his subsequent albums.

[8] Jarre began working with early analogue synthesizers and tape loops in 1968, and in 1969 he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (lit.

'musical research group'),[9] founded and led by Pierre Schaeffer,[10] who developed musique concrete, a type of music composition that is mainly based on the use of pre-recorded sounds, originating the concept of sampling.

[11] In 1971, he left the institution and dedicated himself to designing Triangle's electronic sound effects; he also went to the Pathé-Marconi record company to release it.

[12] Jarre had also done production work for some rock artists, earning enough to set up a small makeshift recording studio in the kitchen of his apartment on Rue de la Trémoille,[13][14] near the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Initially Francis offered Jarre a job as a copyright administrator, however he opted to sign an exclusive songwriting and recording contract.

[21] Jarre in that same year released his respective cover version under the pseudonyms Pop Corn Orchestra and Jammie Jeferson.

[19] Jarre released on Sam Fox Productions his debut experimental album Deserted Palace intended to be used in films and on television.

Geiss, who at that time worked as a maintenance technician at Barclay studios [fr],[30] advised Jarre on the purchase of instruments such as the RMI Harmonic Synthesizer at the Piano Center's music fair, and was in charge of the programming and recording of some of them.

[15] In the Ferber studio Jarre recovered his old Mellotron that had few functional keys to write the first piece of music for the album, "Oxygène (Part II)".

[32][13][29] During the recording of the album Jarre used a Revox tape to delay the sound coming out of a speaker in order to achieve a "huge sense of space".

[16][6][29] The Eminent 310 organ as well as the VCS 3 went through a phase pedal for guitars Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phaser in order to provide the string pads used on the album.

[29] Some of the drum sounds on the album were produced using adhesive tape to hold down two preset buttons on a Korg Mini-Pops 7 drum machine simultaneously – "Oxygène (Part IV)" mixed the "rock" and "slow rock" presets, while "Oxygène (Part VI)" mixed "rhumba" and "bossa nova".

[29][36] The cover art features a skull inside a dismembered Earth and is an adaptation of a 30 x 40 cm (12" x 16") watercolor,[5][13] also named Oxygène, by the French painter Michel Granger.

[39] Jean-Michel decided to meet once again with Francis, the head of the Disques Motors label to see if he could release the album, to which he immediately agreed saying: "Right, well we have a world success...".

[31][44] The radio station also dedicated an hour and a half program in Jean-Michel's studio, and played the entire album, bringing his music to millions of people.

[51] On October 2, 1977, he was invited by host Jacques Martin to an episode of his Sunday program L'orchestre d'Antenne 2, in which the orchestra performed his single "Oxygene (Part IV)".

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.

"[63] The most positive review came from Robin Smith of Record Mirror, in which he stated that, "It's pretty tough to communicate warmth through such music and the end product is usually stilted but Jean Michael Jarre has laid down a variety of forms joined together by cohesive lines."

Phil Alexander of Mojo listed it as one of Jarre's three key albums and wrote that it was "his conscious attempt to unite the worlds of avant-garde, electronic, classical and progressive music."

He said that its "dynamic, warm sound is intoxicating" and regarding "Oxygène (Part IV)", he finished saying it is "an unlikely UK Top 5 hit from what remains an elegant cornerstone of electronic music.

"[14] Jim Brenholts from AllMusic stated that it "is one of the original e-music albums" and that it "has withstood the test of time and the evolution of digital electronica."

[37][71] Welsh music writer Mark Jenkins commented that the album "achieved a dynamic compromise between imaginative sound textures and accessible melodies that for one reason or another had been denied to earlier synthesizer artists".

[73][74] Oxygène has been described as "one of the biggest catalysts to widespread use of the synthesizer in the 1970s"[75] and influenced electronic artists like Moby, who collaborated with Jarre on his 2015 album, Electronica 1: The Time Machine.