Oxygene 7-13 was recorded over a 12-month period at Jarre's studio in Paris, in the home he shares with his wife, Charlotte Rampling, and their three children. From that birthplace, the album went live in 1997 with Jarre's first European arena tour.

To go forward so confidently, Jarre kept ahead of the pack by looking backward. He remains ever the wily musical tactician, as befits someone who was playing piano at his home in Lyon by age five. Jean Michel eschewed this week's newest technological gadgets on the recording of Oxygene 7-13 and returned to the original analogue synthesisers on which he based his very first work in the late 1960's, from his time at the Music Research Group in Paris.

What appealed to Jarre about these old machines - 'the Stradivarius of electronic music', as he calls them - was, what they can't do, as much as what they can. These early analogue synths do not have a memory, so that sounds cannot be replicated. "They were developed by musicians researchers who didn't have to worry about profitability or marketing", he enthuses. "They built their instruments simply because they were enjoying the technology. Which is precisely what Jarre himself continues to do, making synthesiser music a living, breathing thing with a sound that is simply unique, Oxygene 7-13 picks up the theme of the first album and takes the instrumental escapades from Part 7 through to Part 13. It's the upbeat Part 8 that will be the album's first single.

The international audience may have met Jean Michel in 1977, but as we know, his work had extended into many areas of music for several years by then. Leaving the Music Research Group in 1971, he worked in film, theatre, television and commercials, wrote the ballet score AOR for the Paris Opera and the 1973 soundtrack Les Granges Brulees, directed by Jean Chapot and starring two great names of French cinema, Alain Delon and Simone Signoret.

Jean Michel Jarre's creative span has been boundless, for 20 years as a world star and almost 30 as an inquisitive musician. Oxygene 7-13 is about to reaffirm his place in the cosa nostra of modern sound. Welcome back to the true sonic godfather.