On The Road Again: Jean-Michel Jarre "Zoolook [Germany, Polydor 823 763-2]"

viernes, 14 de marzo de 2025

Jean-Michel Jarre "Zoolook [Germany, Polydor 823 763-2]"

Zoolook is the seventh studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released in November 1984 by Disques Dreyfus. Much of the music is built up from samples of singing and speech in 25 different languages recorded and edited in the Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesizer. The album spawned two singles: the title track and "Zoolookologie".

Zoolook was greatly influenced by Jarre's former mentor Pierre Schaeffer and Schaeffer's musique concrète, taking samples from everyday life and human voices in 25 different languages from all over the world. The sample-based approach, which had been initiated on Les Chants Magnétiques (1981) and continued on Music for Supermarkets (1983), was expanded on this album. Some fragments were recorded digitally by Jarre and then played back and edited on the Fairlight CMI. This process was done together with Frederick Rousseau for three months.

I've always been involved in ethnic music, though I thought the way a lot of people have been using ethnic music was a little superficial. Sometimes it works, like the Brian Eno stuff, it worked the first time, but for me what was more interesting was not making a particular statement about recording in Africa or in China, but taking some sounds and having exactly the same attitude as when you were in front of a Moog 55 or a modular system, replacing the oscillators with a bank of actors or people, treating them through the Fairlight or the EMS synth, and establishing an orchestration using only voices.

Some of the vocals were recorded during Jean-Michel's travels, while others are instead the result of his work with Xavier Bellanger, a French ethnologist who during his travels recorded "a large collection of tapes". For this album, Jarre used synthesizers like the Moog 55, ARP 2600, some by EMS, the LinnDrum machine, the Yamaha DX7, the Matrisequencer 250 designed by French sound engineer Michel Geiss for Équinoxe (1978), and the E-mu Emulator. The different languages as listed in the album's liner notes are: Aboriginal, Afghan, Arabic, Balinese, Bengali, Chinese, Dutch, English, Eskimo, French, German, Hungarian, Indian, Japanese, Malagasy, Malayan, Pygmy, Polish, Quechua, Russian, Sioux, Spanish, Swedish, Tibetan, and Turkish.

Much of the album's recording took place in Jarre's makeshift studio in Croissy-sur-Seine, France (credited as Croissy Studio). Sound engineer Denis Vanzetto joined Jarre's team, and later went to the Clinton studio, New York for recording American musicians chosen by Jean-Michel, among them guitarists Adrian Belew and Ira Siegel, bassist Marcus Miller, and percussionist and drummer Yogi Horton. After Jean-Michel read in the American newspaper The Village Voice about an exhibition held by the avant-garde singer Laurie Anderson in a New York gallery, he called and invited her to the studio to listen to his demos. Seduced by Jarre's proposed idea of speaking a completely imaginary language, she agreed and provided the vowels for the track "Diva". Parts of the album, like the track "Blah Blah Café" and the second half of the track "Diva", were reworkings of material that had already appeared on the 1983 album Musique pour Supermarché. The album was mostly mixed by David Lord: final mixing began at Trident Studios in London, but Jarre wasn't satisfied with the results, so he and Lord finished mixing at Jarre's home studio in France.

Zoolook was released in November 1984, with a second edition, containing remixes for Zoolook and Zoolookologie, in September 1985. More aurally challenging than Jarre's previous works, the album was also somewhat less successful, reaching only number 47 in the UK album charts. Two singles from the album were released – the title track and "Zoolookologie". Both had a music video in 1985. The title track video was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and featured twelve robots designed by Marc Caro, of which only one was kept after filming. The video of "Zoolookologie" was directed by Rod McCall and produced by Frank Coppola in London, UK. It "shows three models flirting with the artist in a provocative fantasy".

In 1984, the album won the Grand Prix du Disque award by L'Académie Charles Cros, and in April 1985 it won the best instrumental album of the year award, at the Victoires de la Musique. In 2016, a contest called Zoolook Revisited was organized, in which amateur or professional producers were invited to share a piece using samples taken from the SoundHunters app. Tracks from winners such as Luke Vibert, Zeka Lopez, Mikael Seifu, Simonne Jones and KIZ were chosen by Jean-Michel himself and were included on the disc of the same name.

Track listing

First edition – original track list (1984)