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".
Composition and recording
Zoolook was greatly influenced by Jarre's former mentor Pierre Schaeffer and Schaeffer's musique concrète, taking samples from everyday life and voice human in 25 different languages from all over the world.[4][5] In this album was expanded the sample-based approach which had been initiated on Les Chants Magnétiques (1981) and continued on Music for Supermarkets (1983). Some fragments were recorded digitally by Jarre and then played back and edited on the Fairlight CMI.[6] This process was done together with Frederick Rousseau for three months.[7]
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.[8]
Much of the album's recording took place both Jarre's makeshift studio in Croissy-sur-Seine, France (credited as Croissy Studio).[12] Sound engineer Denis Vanzetto joined the Jarre team, and later going 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.[7][13] After Jean-Michel read in an 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".[7][11] 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.[7] 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.[12][14][11]
Release
Zoolook was released in November 1984 on Disques Dreyfus label,[15][16] and launched worldwide in September 1985 by Polydor Records label.[17][18] More aurally challenging than Jarre's previous works, the album was also somewhat less successful, reaching only number 47 in the UK album charts.[19] 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,[20] and featured twelve robots designed by Marc Caro of which only one was kept after filming.[21] The video of "Zoolookologie" was directed by Rod McCall and produced by Frank Coppola in London, UK.[22] It "shows three models flirting with the artist in a provocative fantasy".[17]
In 1984, the album won the Grand Prix du Disque award by L'Académie Charles Cros,[23] and in April 1985 it won the best instrumental album of the year award, at the Victoires de la Musique.[13] 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 selected winners such as Luke Vibert, Zeka Lopez, Mikael Seifu, Simonne Jones and KIZ by Jean-Michel himself were included on the disc of the same name.[24]
At the time of its release NME said, "Strangely simplistic, this LP is like a union between Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and Kraftwerk on speed".[26] Australian newspaper The Evening News commented that "is a phonetic symphony laced with catchy, funk-rock rhythms based on the intonations of various exotic languages."[27]
In France, Le Devoir felt that the beginning of the album was "a musical background both morbid and grandiose."[28] In Mojo magazine, Phil Alexander listed it as one of Jarre's three key albums and wrote that Jarre's rumination on internationalism also boasts a deliberate melodic focus that acknowledges the influence of synth pop, while pointing the way forward to greater experimentation – both in his own work and that of others."[16]
AllMusic's John Bush stated which "Jean Michel Jarre combined an actual band and processed vocal samples -- recorded in 25 different languages -- with his rich, melodic synthesizer pop", described the album as "interesting throughout" and added that "the tracks with Jarre alone are often the best, reprising the classic Oxygène sound."[25] "Zoolookologie" was described by Thom Holmes as a, "A fascinating exploration of samples both of voice and drums".[29]
