OXYGÈNE 7-13

It was probably inevitable that sooner or later Jean Michel Jarre would be prompted to revisit his breakthrough album Oxygene - particularly in the wake of Mike Oldfield's successful revisiting of Tubular Bells demonstrated that there was an appetite in the "New Age" market for updated revisitations of old themes.

As the title implies, the music here is presented as an organic continuation of the original album, and Jarre manages to skilfully revisit the old stomping ground with instrumentation that doesn't sound too out of place (perhaps a happy side-effect of the original Oxygene sounding so far ahead of its time) and sprinkles on a few more modern electronic influences (including a bit of trance here and there) which refresh the sound of the album whilst keeping its character recognisable. Motifs from the original album come back to play here and there, but there's enough new material to make the album more than a mere exercise in nostalgia.