Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[moviemaker]

PPPS - Most times when I listen to Zoolook, I start to think about Americans walking around in shorts eating burgers in some downtown park!!!

Boy... is this a myopic view of a nation of people...

[mathetes1963]

PPPS - Most times when I listen to Zoolook, I start to think about Americans walking around in shorts eating burgers in some downtown park!!!

Boy... is this a myopic view of a nation of people...

Yep.

[Pisuke85]

Zoolook is by far my favorite album! I found it very innovative and remarkable. Here Jarre's work on voice sampling has reached an apogee, and the way those samples structured the whole album, from bass line to drums, is incredible. When I first heard it in the mid 90's I was amazed, and I remember my stepmother asked me to decrease the volume many times, as she just couldn't bear those weird sounds.

Personally, I don't like the remixed versions of Zoolook and Zoolookologie. I like better the 1984 original ones, because I find that the voice samples are more incisive and can be heard better, while they're more blended with the accompaniment in the remixes. Besides, the original Zoolookologie contains more rhythm sections that contribute to the electric ambiance of the track.

Ethnicolor is an excellent track too. Jarre talked about "Images" floating in our mind when listening to his music... As for Ethnicolor, I usually think about oppressed people, or any kind of dictatorship, because of those sporadic, wistful shouts.

Here is my customer review from the French iTunes Music Store :

Voilà un album plein d'audace, cosmopolite, minutieusement travaillé. Un son recherché, très exigeant et pas toujours facile d'écoute, mais pourtant exceptionnel. L'échantillonage de voix humaine, mixée et remixée, notamment par le synthétiseur Fairlight CMI, constitue la clef de voûte de l'album. On est entraîné dans un univers surréaliste et polyglotte, où les voix sont partout, structurant les morceaux des basses aux percussions. La composition musicale reste assez pauvre, comme bien souvent chez Jarre, mais on prend plaisir à (ré)entendre toutes les subtilités sonores qui fourmillent ça et là : les appels plaintifs qui se dissipent dans Ethnicolor, l'oscillation entre voyelles "a" et "é" dans Zoolook, l'ambiance électrique de Zoolookologie, les saxos moqueurs de Blah Blah Café, les sons de supermarchés... Un album excentrique et grisant !

[AnDrOiD]

When I first listened to Zoolook in 1984, I was very disappointed... too different from the other albums.

[Kanta]

I this album. I remember my sister purchasing the album on cassette. We played it so much that the tape got stuck in the player and came out of the cassette. Tried to put it back in but the tape was ruined.

My favorite tracks have got to be Ethnicolor and Ethnicolor II. If you listen very carefully at the end of Ethnicolor II you will hear a man's voice speaking (could be JMJ himself), one word like Nim, that is my sister's name.

[moviemaker]

Yes, an amazing album and I think a bit ahead of it's time with it's fusion of all sorts of things and a great line-up with Adrian Belew of King Crimson, Laurie Anderson and Frédéric Rousseau!!!

I thought for sure Metamorphoses was gonna be a sort of follow-up to this, especially with LAurie Anderson coming back but alas was not meant to be (even if is a pretty great album, just not a lot of new ways of thinking and discovery to it like Zoolook--if that makes sense?).

Though I always thought the covers were similar so maybe it is a sequal of sorts...

[Jakob BC]

Never really thought about the similar (zoo)look, but yes there is something about it

[GeeJee]

I noticed the similarities before indeed. Vocal samples play a big role in both albums too...

[Normund]

In me Zoolook brings up the visions of a purely ethnic nature, especially keeping in mind the context of Australia. Wasn't this exactly what the author himself wanted to convey and express?
For me there are no vocals in Zoolook. And you can read the names of all those languages used as phrases or words in the recording in the booklet to agree that it is really another tower of Babel to expect any certainty to come out of it. I liked that approach but I form no connection between Zoolook and Metamorphoses. I do form a link between, say, Revolution, Revolutions and C'est la vie easily.

[Pisuke85]

I've never seen any similarity between Zoolook and Metamorphoses.
Maybe there are vocal performances and the participation of Laurie Anderson among other people, but both albums have a really different spirit. Even the portraits on the covers don't convey the same atmosphere.

[Normund]

I've never seen any similarity between Zoolook and Metamorphoses.
Maybe there are vocal performances and the participation of Laurie Anderson among other people, but both albums have a really different spirit. Even the portraits on the covers don't convey the same atmosphere.

Hear, hear!
As to the portraits, I think that used for Zoolook is an example of computer-generated imagery whereas the one used for Metamorphoses purports to use the smear effect of a long shutter speed. Nothing in common, except for the person portrayed. This also applies to colour solutions.

[CLUBMIX]

there's some sort of "smear effect" on the right edge of the "Zoolook" front cover as well, so speaking about "nothing in common" was just a bit too fast

But as was pointed out before, there are more similarities between these two albums: firstly, the participation of Laurie Anderson, then secondly the "piece by piece" character of the album (instead of one long piece cut into bits, like it was done before), thirdly the kind of ethnical character of the album(s).

But apart from any possible similarities these 2 albums (or any other album) could have, here's what I think "Zoolook" is all about:

I first saw that album in 1984 in record stores, wondering how they did the cover artwork. When I got the album cassette from my Grandma, I listened to it over and over again feeling a bit disappointed by this "piece by piece" character of the album (like mentioned before), as it didn't quit fit into the "Oxygène" and "Equinoxe" feeling, neither piece-wise, nor style-wise.

I was so amazed by the cover artwork that I decided to draw it myself, and the only possibility I had to look after while drawing, was the cover of a cassette tape. Imagine how small that was compared to the drawing I then managed to do, which was about 3 times bigger.

More I listened to the album, more I liked it, even though others kept saying that (especially when "Ethnicolor" kicked in) it was "ghost music". I began to get used to the fact that nearly everything that can be heard on the album is made from samples and found it cool what music "instruments" were able to do - at that time! I then also started to get interested in electronic music equipment and tried to gather as much information about it as possible. It also hapened that I had a little notebook where I noted all electronic music instruments (and related stuff) in huge lists. Later on, I tried to complete these lists with cut-out images of these instruments...

Well, "Zoolook" is still one of my favourite albums, and everytime I listen to the last track ("Ethnicolor II"), I get extremely melancholic....

[Jakob BC]

Ethnicolor II is an overheard track. I really like it I remember how much Ethnicolor I put my mind on a work many years ago, and that was only the first part of the track (from the Images album)

[Normund]

there's some sort of "smear effect" on the right edge of the "Zoolook" front cover as well, so speaking about "nothing in common" was just a bit too fast

In terms of photography I saw there and have said exactly what I meant to say. There is a vast difference between some sort of digitally created smear and the optical 'in situ' smear I described.

[CLUBMIX]

there's some sort of "smear effect" on the right edge of the "Zoolook" front cover as well, so speaking about "nothing in common" was just a bit too fast

In terms of photography I saw there and have said exactly what I meant to say. There is a vast difference between some sort of digitally created smear and the optical 'in situ' smear I described.

I can remember having written some sort of and "smear effect" (with the "" symbols). I was also talking about similarities and not identical details. But thanks for the clarification. I guess I wouldn't have recognized that vast difference...