Customer Reviews

Tourist

5 star:		(110)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Tourist is, if I am not mistaken, St.Germain's first full-length CD since "Boulevard", five years ago. The long wait was well worth it. Published by the Blue Note records (which speaks by itself), the Tourist's jazz samples are lovingly reinvented and seamlessly altered and mixed with modern, 'urban' rhythm and beats and completed by Ludovic Navarre and additional participation of Pascal Ohze (trumpet), Edouard Labor (sax, flute), Alexandre Destrez (keys), Idrissa Diop (talking drum), Carneiro (percussion) and Claudio de Qeiroz (baryton) plus the sonorous guitar of the "legendary (Ernest) Ranglin, one of the great unsung guitarists in jazz and Caribbean music" (The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD). Particularly interesting is the transformation of "Harry's Philosophy" from a desolate blues miniature of John Lee Hooker (taken from the soundtrack to "Hot Spot", by M. Davis, J.L. Hooker, A. Cooper, T. Mahal and R. Rogers) to almost cheerful dance track with a "twist". Other highlights of my choice: the voice of Marlena Shaw over a loop of Dave Brubeck's Take Five ("Rose Rouge"), excellent "Land of..." with soulful introduction on organ and piano, and great funky saxophones, delicate guitar by E. Ranglin on "Montego Bay Spleen", the upbeat spider piano dance of the "Latin Note"... and there are plenty of other musical pleasures in the 60 minutes of the Tourist.

"Boulevard" was very good, but "Tourist" is better, more dense, rounded and mature. Get them both! Beautiful art work for the cover, too.

With so many "global lounge" and trippy dub discs coming out recently, it is tough to decide what to get and it is rare that an album is so clearly as superior to the rest of its genre as is St. Germain's tourist.

Borrwing a page from Moby's Play and expanding on it, this disc is a combination of looped dub-like drums and bass sounds, vocal samples and live studio musicians. The combination is astounding. Deep seductive drum loops and bass tracks lay the foundation while the live insturmentation (horns, flute, keyboards, and percussion) are layered over the top. Finally, jazz, blues, and latin vocal fragments float through the songs like swirls of puffy clouds floating through an otherwise perfect blue sky.

This CD is a delicious combination of sounds. If any of the jazz cats from Miles Davis to Ben Webster could hear this, they would recognize that same smokey, groovy goodness that makes their own records perpetual favorites. In fact, if Davis was the birth of cool, this is certainly a rebirthing or an upate for the new millenium.

Do yourself a favor and pick this up.

The first song I heard from this CD was "Sure Thing" and it knocked me out, bluesy guitar intro sounding like Jimi rising, setting a George Bensonesque groove that thumped me into knowing I had to have this. St. Germain(Ludovic Navarre) is conceptually brilliant, the fusion of jazz and house, the further development of acid jazz, electronica and jazz dance music, new groove standards, never pretentious, always challenging yet fun, this is music based in tradition with an electronic twist. The French producer, writer and conductor known as St.Germain has created an instant classic. The opening track sets the tempo, borrowing from Marlena Shaws performance at Montreux her "I want you to get together.... put your hand together" create a perfect backdrop for the jazzy interplay of the six musicians he assembled for this masterful fusion. This is one of those rare CD's that will be played over and over, sounds better with familarity and gets plenty of use of the replay button on your player. Although it is jazz, it is just as much electronica. The mixture of latin beats, dub, house, electronica, blues and jazz are given equal treatment, never dominating but creating a synthesis that is satisfying, a musical collage that takes one back and looking forward at the same time. This is an excellent CD, nearly flawless in its production and well worth the money. One song,(samples from John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis) "Sure Thing", made me buy it, you will find out as I did that all the songs are superb, a must for jazz or house music fans.

a great new CD that is predominantly a jazz work with some interesting funk, electronic and blues influences tossed in. the best tracks on the CD tend to be the ones with the least amount of jazz influence such as #1 Rouse Rouge and #6 Sure Thing. but since all of the tracks are good it's worth looking at each individually:

#1. ROSE ROUGE - a famous jazz hook from Brubeck's "Mr. New York" is the setting for a bluesy, soulful, repititive vocal line of "I want you to get together"; #2. MONTEGO BAY SPLEEN - a lumbering jazz piece with outstanding jazz guitar work throughout. makes me really appreciate the guitar again; #3. SO FLUTE- a funky flute intro, uptempo throughout. unfortunately the piece doesnt really develop after the nice intro. #4. LAND OF - the most traditional jazz piece on the album. no electronic influence at all. some gorgeous piano work throughout. shades of the 70's band "The Jazz Crusaders" throughout, particularly with the out front horn section.; #5. LATIN NOTE - a busy samba piece, this time the featured instrument is vibraphone; #6. SURE THING -- great piece, maybe best on the album. there's a funky texas-rock guitar piece enhanced with a phaser and accompanied by blues vocal with a similar effect applied. it's a seamless combination of a downtempo R&B piece with electronic enhancements prominently featured and it's awesome. #7. PONT DES ARTS - uptempo lounge piece, consistent beat throughout, probably the most danceable track on the album; #8. LA GOUTTE D'OR - wooden flute featured here. develops into rhythmic multi-textured drum piece with congas and other traditional percussion instruments. #9. WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT - prominent bass line and bluesy vocal accents close out the album with another jazz laden piece.

The music St. Germain created here actually sounds remarkably like a '96 CD called THE NEW GROOVE: THE BLUE NOTE REMIX PROJECT, VOL. 1, on which various hip-hop/club artists remixed classic Blue Note cuts. If you like TOURIST, you should definitely get that CD as well. This record is good, but I think it might appeal more to fans of club music who like some jazz, rather than the other way around. I say that because there isn't much rhythmic complexity within each track, the kind you'll hear from a great jazz drummer (although St. Germain does alter the beat from track to track, I'll give him that). Generally he sets up a simple, steady club beat with each cut, and then the musicians create some jazzy solos on top. If you're used to the more complex rhythms of jazz, you may get bored with these beats.

I think Amon Tobin mines a similar vein much more creatively; his atmospheres are more evocative, his forms more flexible, his music more suprising. I like this St. Germain CD for what it is, an update on '70s jazz-fusion, like a HEADHUNTERS for this decade; but with all the critical bouqets tossed its way, I just expected something really groundbreaking. In my opinion, THE NEW GROOVE was a groundbreaking record; this is just retracing some of the tracks that album left behind.

This 60 minute long cd is absolute a favourite of mine. The genre is what is called Nu Jazz/Nu House. The characteristics of the different tracks are cool, lounging, jazzy and soft House orientated beats. All the tracks vary a lot, so it is quite impossible to predict the next track on the cd. The first track "Rouse Rouge" is a semi fast jazz track with nice vocaling that seem a bit addictive, some would say a little mad. Track no. 2 "Montego Bay Spleen" is a slow dub track that sounds a lot like Massive Attack, only with jazzy guitarplaying. Tack no. 3 "So Flute" is a real cool track which is a bit more House inspired with real nice flute as the dominant instrument. Track no. 4 "Land of..." is a Blues/Jazz inspired track, also real comforting. Track no. 5 "Latin Note" is a Jazz track with a comforting Housebeat and some nice congas drums. Track no. 6 "Sure Thing" is a real smooth lounging track. Track no. 7 "Pont Des Arts" is more of a chilling Housetrack with some real nice and cool piano playing. Track no. 8 "La Goutte D'Or" is a dub track with real nice flute playing. Track no. 9 "What you think about" is more of a Soul Jazzy track. Confused? Well, you have got any reason to be! I really love this cd since I am a big fan of lounge, House, Nu Jazz and what all the different genres contain of experimenting with new sounds and effects. If you are a fan of the genres as described or you just want a varied cd in your collection to chill out to, then this is an absolutely must buy. I promise you will not regret!

Giving five stars to records like "Tourist" is a no-brainer. Here is an album that stands in a class of its own. There's no hype machine, no belly-baring vocalists, and none of the songs are ridiculously overproduced. It's a winning basket of jazzed-up midtempo grooves with mild, electronic touches. A must have!

Out there in musicland's vaults there's some great albums just waiting to be found... and here's one! A shuffling, bustling fusion of acid-jazz & blues based on clever sampling and superbly tight playing that demands attention first time through and, like all great records, just gets better & better with repeat listening. Along with Suba's latin:hip-hop "Sao Paulo Confessions", Ernest Ranglin's afro:jazz "Modern Answers to Old Problems" and Kenny Burrell's classic jazz on "Midnight Blue" - all discovered this year - Saint Germain's "Tourist" grabs repeated space on my CD player and will on yours. And... if you've got the extra cash and your dancing shoes on buy the import version for it's second CD containing three excellent club re-mixes - in particular the extended version of "Sure Thing" with it's quite marvellous John Lee Hooker sampled vocals. Wonderful stuff and proof positive that however much you think you know there's more!

Whereas the spirit of jazz seems to have been castrated here in the United States, giving birth to all sorts of perverse "smooth jazz" incarnations, elsewhere in the world - particularly in France, it would seem - jazz is dancing and celebrating life as passionately as ever.

St. Germain is a wonderfully delicious mix of house beats and jazz improvisation; rather than rehash old jazz tunes and subject them to an electronica-plastered martyrdom, St. Germain - Ludovic Navarre and company - use live instrumentation for their creative and intoxicating mix. A little Latin groove here, some hip-hop and r&b there, a driving house beat and downright manic solos all fit together to remind us of what it is that jazz is supposed to be.

This is one of the few CDs that I own that really seems to cross over and through the various genre gaps; it is smooth - that is, sexy and classy (without being pretentious) at the same time - but also has an excess of pizazz that keeps the listener engaged and flowing. Such genre-bending both subverts and converts jazz as it has been and propells it into a potential future-made-present; the rumors of a better sound are heard here as a whisper expressed in symphonic song.

Perhaps[?] oddly enough, everyone that I have ever played this CD for - whether a 19 year-old Marine, a banker in her mid-40s, or college students that prefer rap and its various metal cross-breeds - liked it. While I doubt world peace will begin with bringing the people together to listen to St. Germain's "Tourist", at the same time there really is something ... beautiful about so many different people being able to listen to and appreciate the same music. It whispers something of the beauty within human subjects.

This is a really, really great CD; 5 stars does not do it justice as it is in a class of its own, far beyond the all-too-quantitative measurement of 5 stars. It breathes spirit and creativity - the best that music as expression and imagination has to offer. Paint your canvas with some passionate new colors; bring the diaspora of your friends together...

I'm not particularly literate on the subject of house jazz, acid jazz, or any other jazz but when I asked a trusted soul to recommend some music that was able to meet a variety of demands, he came up with "Tourist". The demands: The cd must be able to be played straight through, with no skipping around. The cd must be able to be played continuously for multiple days on end. The cd must be able to be used interchangeably both as background music capable of inspiring extreme but lucid fits of working creativity AND as foreground music capable of inspiring relaxation, excitement, calmness, sleep and/or dancing, depending on one's mood. Finally, the CD must be smart, sassy, serious, silly and sexy at the same time. "Tourist" meets these demands. Very satisfying.