Customer Reviews

Zoolook

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Jarre was never a critical favourite (in the UK he barely existed, as far as the music press was concerned), and although 'Oxygene', 'Equinoxe', 'Magnetic Fields' and 'Rendezvous' are the albums to start with if you're interested in Jarre's take on spacy synth pop, 'Zoolook' was where he went all experimental. It has Laurie Anderson on it, and is reminiscent of Brian Eno and David Byrne's 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts', recorded as it was with an early sampler. Indeed the whole album is plastered with samples of voices, and although it sounds very old-fashioned there's a certain primitive early-80s avant garde charm to it. It's a fan favourite, with all that entails; it's hard to get into, and not all of it works, but it's intriguing. Only two of the tracks are conventional pop tunes, and if you don't like 'Ethnicolor' you're going to hate this album.

Musically it is double-plus unlike Jarre's earlier and later work, almost as if the man was channelling the spirits of Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel, and aspects of contemporary American dance music. The title track and 'Zoolookologie' are catchy and fun, the closest he came to funk. The remixed versions presented here were added quite early on in the album's run, and are superior to the generally-similar versions to be found on early LP pressings. They're almost like something by the Tom Tom Club, but with a multi-million franc budget.

Both 'Blah Blah Cafe' and 'Diva' popped up on the previous year's 'Music for Supermarkets', and the latter is presented here with Laurie Anderson performing vocal sounds. The former is again reminiscent of Talking Heads, although it doesn't really go anywhere and suffers as a result ('Diva' has a similar problem; there are two parts, but they don't progress).

'Ethnicolor' is, in contrast, a sombre dirge dotted with random sampled speech, which turns into a quasi-rock number at the end. It's the album's high point and starts off with a particularly memorable screeching noise. As far as I am concerned it's the best of Jarre's prog-esque multi-part longer pieces, quieter and sadder than 'Rendezvous II' from his next album.

'Woolloomooloo' and 'Ethnicolor II' are what would now be called ambient, although only the latter really works, its mixture of found sounds and mournful sampled cellos acting as the perfect finale. The album itself sold poorly and Jarre turned his back on this kind of this; his next release, 'Rendezvous', was slick electronic pop music with an entertainingly Wagnerian symphony taking up most of side one. 'Zoolook' is an aquired taste, and Jarre was clearly never going to be held in the same esteem as Eno or Boulez, but it remains fascinating today, a little relic of early sampling.

There are some truly groundbreaking electronic albums out there and Zoolook is one of them. JMJ's first abums, Oxygene and Equinoxe are excellent. His 3rd album, Magnetic Fields has some great tracks but does not have the same impact. Perhaps realising this, JMJ set upon a new path. Zoolook is the result. I was 13 when this album came out and it blew my mind. Often an artist ventures in a new direction and looses himself in the process. This is not the case with Zoolook. Jarre sampled recordings of idiginious voices from many countries into his Fairlight CMI,then processed them, turning them into alien sounding instruments. Zoolook is not some arty farty attempt at creativity. The emotional responses this album engenders for me is the same nowdays as it was in 1984, the music and production was and is ahead of its time. Zoolook, Oxygene and Equinoxe are JMJ's greatest creations. Zoolook is completely different from his previous and later work. Deserving 5 stars, Zoolook is one of the most original albums ever made. My favourite album for many years, I continue to hear new things every time i give Zoolook a spin. Check it out at all costs.

I think this is Jarre's most interesting and ambitious album to date. Some of his albums didn't stand the test of time, but this one still sounds fresh and intriguiung. The basic idea of "Zoolook" is the combination of vocal samples from over 60 different languages with Jarre's typical synth background. This doesn't always work well, because sometimes it sounds too childish and predictable. But for the most part this album is an adventurous affair, and the keyboard sound is more powerful and direct than on Jarre's other records.. Standout tracks are the highly danceable "Zoolookologie", "Diva" with some vocals from American cult singer Laurie Anderson, and the over-the-clouds track "Ethnicolor II". Even if this album is untypical for Jarre's output, it's really worth buying and will ultimately prove more satisfying than many of his other albums.

Very different from earlier J.M.Jarre and very good . Some people told me : this is not real him , it is too different . I did not agree with them . Technology was developing very fast in mid80's so as J.M.Jarre did . We can't expect him to stay in one place and not to move forward , as he did with this album .
I'll give you 2 opposite examples :
1. Kitaro . After he moved away from Japan ... his music changed from best to worse . He changed ...
2. Pierre Jeunet . The director of " City of Lost Children " and " Alien 4 ". His new film " Amelie " is soooo different from earlier work ... I was shocked by it , but I loved it . He changed but he moved forward .
So as Jean Michel Jarre with this album . Try to listen to it while walking in the crowd ... you'll find 2 different rhythms : one for you and another one " for them ". Excellent feeling of being a part of the crowd but being all by yourself at the same time .

I have had this CD since the mid 80's when a friend from England introduced me to Jarre. This is by far my favorite of all my "New Age"/electronic CD collection. If you are a person like me who looks beyond the commercial crap out there and wants something different/unusual/daring musically speaking, give this timeless piece a chance. I am listening to Zoolookologie as I write this - go ahead, open up your mind and be a kid again. Enjoy!

I picked up my first, Equinoxe, in 1981, only because I liked the cover, go figure. I knew the hit Oxygene, but did not know who the artist was. I now own all of JMJ's CD's. No artist that I have ever heard has swept me into so many emotional whirlwinds. This CD scares me, pleases me, sets me free. It is a singularly powerful foray into deep dark corners of the imagination.

The artist bears his self, and the listener who is honest will do the same.

A timeless jewel, one of the best additions to the time capsule.

Moving away from his sweet '70s persona, Jarre enters with this album a different sphere entirely. He still uses a remarkable combination of electronic sounds, many recognizable from his earlier work. The simple harmonies remain, too. But added is a large, sometimes harrowing palette of sampled sound...from Muslim chants to animal grunts...and Jarre uses them in ways that often make the disk almost frightening.

Laurie Anderson's vocal contributions are among the work's greatest riches. Sometimes sampled, sometimes presented in straight vocalise, her trademark creativity meshes brilliantly with the new direction Jarre takes and gives his music the human touch without which it might have been no more than horrific.

"Zoolook" also breaks from Jarre's earlier style in presenting considerably harder rhythms that often look forward two decades to the "techno" revolution of the late '90s.

In sum, this is a disk tailor-made for more than just die-hard Jarre fans while still offering everything his loyal supporters crave.

I bought it expecting to have that great cassette that my brother brought once directly from Europe a long ago when I was a kid, turned now into a high quality CD (that part is OK). But then I got (a little, or very?) disappointed because Zoolook and Zoolookologie, precisely the two titles that I like the most from this production, were "remixed". I know that it says that this was a "reissued" recording but I was not expecting it to be half-original, half-edited.

Whose great idea was that? Why didn't they keep the originals and then just added the remixes as extras in all that remaining space like many other artists do when they make compilations or stuff like that? If anyone has heard the original recording back from the 80's, they know what I'm talking about. Although the Zoolook remix is not so bad because it sounds practically identical to the original, with maybe just a couple of seconds more in length, Zoolookologie was altered in a way that downgraded it instead of keeping the magic of the original one. (Man, my favorite one...)

The music is the same. They didn't make another "version" like it happens in many of his later compilations where he has to make singles out of tracks that are part of a continuous chain of titles with no gap between them. That is understandable. But those new cuts in Zoolookologie where the bass fades away because whoever was mixing it (I pray to God it wasn't JMJ himself!) didn't do a good job, take a lot out of the PERFECT matched rythm of the original one.

The original is a real JMJ classic; this new "reissued" version was a flop from my point of view. It was unnecessarily altered just to make it longer. Maybe you can extend time, but not the perfect balance that the original had. It sounds incoherent, out of rythm in those altered parts. Someone like me, who plays the original over and over so much that remembers it note from note, instrument by instrument, can clearly and sadly hear the difference, not for the best really. They took out in its climax that nice catchy part where they pick the bass after the percussion solo to return to the main rythm before ending. One of the best parts of the original, gone forever, not even relocated somewhere else in the track. :-(

I wish they could make an "Original Remastered" version, and not a "Reissued" one with unnecessary mixes. Just put the mixes at the end as extras. I for sure would buy it again if I could get the version that I remember so much. If I am not wrong from what I recall, the original recording had a nice booklet explaining how he recorded and mixed the many different voice samplings that he used in all the tracks to create that unique "music". It was one of the highlights of his production, because it was like an "ethnological" music experiment (listen carefully to Ethnicolor, the first track, and you'll get the meaning of its name) combining the vocalizations from different languages, genders, cultures... This new one has mostly just musician and production credits repeated in different languages over and over, not much to say about its true production value...

But If you are a new JMJ fan, I recommend this one very much anyway. It is one of his best works, and out from the two remixes, the other tracks are the originals. Great ones all.

This a great techno-dance artisitc allbum from the 80's If you like Laurie Anderson's Big Science you will like this allbum!

Yeah, I own the entire Jarre catalog. This recording was initial exposure to Jarre, which prompted me to get the rest. Honestly, this stands out the most. The blend of voices, instruments, and syntys creates a new world music that I wishe he'd revisit. When I reach for a Jarre disc, this one causes me to listen from beginning to end without skipping tracks.