Jean-Michel Jarre - Zoolook
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Jean-Michel JarreEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued
CD Release Date: 1994-02-01
Music Label: Dreyfus
Soundtracks:
- Ethnicolor
- Diva
- Zoolook [Mix]
- Wooloomooloo
- Zoolookologie [Remix]
- Blah Blah Cafe
- Ethnicolor II
Free Music Notes for Zoolook
Free Music Review: One of a kind
Hit: 5 Stars
There was a phase in the first part of the 80ies when digital technologies where new or expected to become available very soon, and some musicians were in a mood for experimentation with idealistic utopias mapping out the new territories while still on a superstar budget.
I remember hating Zoolook when it first came out - a lot!
My expecations were set by Jarre's dreamy earlier works of Oxygene, Equinoxe, Magnetic Fields as well as the Concerts in China that were resonating daily through my teenage nursery evoking dreams of distant planets, space stations, nuclear wastelands and massive ocean waves hitting distant shores.
Unlike these earlier efforts which featured Jarre, Jarre and Jarre as composer, performer, producer, etc., Zoolook features guest musicians - people actually making music *together*... also, *real drums!!!*
People were probably sweating making this music. Unacceptable! :)
In retrospect, this shift in Jarre's oevre seems to have been foretold by the live setup used e.g. on Concerts in China: The tracks Souvenir of China and Night in Shanghai for example seem more related to Zoolook than to his earlier albums with an attitude much more clear cut and performance-oriented.
The album also represents a moment in Jarre's career when he was closest to contemporaries such as Peter Gabriel/David Byrne/Brian Eno (e.g. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts). Laurie Anderson even appears as vocalist on "Diva", being very much herself.
But Zoolook still occupies a very unique niche.
Next to Jarre's sound-experimentalism, which seems transposed from the warm and spacey analog sounds of his earlier albums into the transparent clarity of the digital, the album's conceptual identity is created by speech samples from a large variety of different languages, edited and shortened to effectively efface the specific word or language they originated from.
What remains are anonymous references to the universal human activity of uttering syllables - a kind of meta language understood (or "not understood") by every human being in a similar way.
Especially on the A-side which features the two long-form ear trips Ethnicolor and Diva, this works quite well.
The B-side features shorter "pop format" tracks that do display Jarre's tendency towards ultra-simplified "sequel of the chicken dance" melodies, but all of them have a unique atmosphere, interesting twist or funkiness to them that make them worthwhile and unlike anything else.
If you want to know what the Fairlight CMI meant to pop music, I think this is the Album where it is used in the most powerful way.
Whether you are going to love this album or are annoyed by it is a question of taste of course - it seems unquestionable that it will survive as a unique artifact of its era. Inimitable, unremixable, matchless.
In retrospect, it became my favourite Album of Jean-Michel Jarre.
But I will also never forget the unmatched classic first three Albums (Oxygene, Equinoxe and the A-side of Magnetic Fields).
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