Jean Michel Jarre
Zoolook

"Zoolook" has long been a controversial album, especially among Jarre fans; on the one hand, they began to understand that he was not getting stuck on a tested musical cliché (the "Oxygene" style, to be clear), but on the other hand, they saw it as a sort of betrayal of the style that had brought him success, a quality success, by the way.

"Zoolook" is indeed a revolutionary album in the Frenchman's discography, a mirror of the times and an expression of a desire to evolve that did not hide some authorial perplexities. From cosmic and minimalist-inspired electronics, all atmospheres, and sci-fi suggestions, to electronics imbued with metropolism and vocal experiments, with ethnic references and redundant rhythms: a step that was more like a leap and undoubtedly puzzled the audience of the time.

I am among those who greatly appreciated this new compositional front, also because of my growing interest in combining experimentation with a more accessible approach. In this direction, Jarre had surely sensed that the golden age of intellectual electronics devoted to long introspections was ending; and it was bands like Art Of Noise (or among the old guards, Kraftwerk) that were holding sway among the new generations. Moreover, the advent of the sampler as an affordable instrument of sound creativity was experiencing its first glories at that time, and Jarre did not miss the opportunity to put his melodic sensitivity at the service of more multifaceted musicality.

Some peculiar characteristics of his style did not sink into the playful aspect of "Zoolook", as some claimed, crying scandal. The first two long tracks, although pervaded by vocal baroquism and inventions actually closer to Art Of Noise than Tangerine Dream, maintain a typically French cultural line and a narrative always close to pictorial symbolism. "Ethnicolor" is a colossal hymn to the era of new inter-racial communications, which with alternating whispered suspensions and blatant digital incursions, triumphs with a poignant symphonic finale, enriched by the tormented bass of Marcus Miller. Immediately after, "Diva", woven on the sampled vocalizations of guest Laurie Anderson (what a guest!), spans from cavernous drips of cosmic environments to futuristic divertissements that would not look out of place in front of a Balla sculpture.
Thus, a series of enjoyable pieces that rhythm the listening experience continuously and skillfully mix dance sensations with robotic reminiscences of Kraftwerk and pre-quotations of Jarre's later albums. When not particularly metronomic, the harmonies become more world and, if you will, jazzy, with the metropolitan-African loops of "Woolomolo" and the saxophonic raspberries of "Blah-Blah Cafe".
To close, "Ethnicolor II" which has nothing in common with the opening track of the same name and instead fixes on Blade Runner-like atmospheres, sketching the contours of some corner of a future city populated by the melancholies of human and mutant individuals.

An album more homogeneous and coherent than it might seem, although less structured than albums like "Equinoxe" because it is centered on a vivid conceptuality that transforms the images of a world in becoming into sounds, suddenly aware that the very city of Blade Runner - in 1982 still endowed with futuristic charm - was already a reality just a few years later.
The least Jarre-like Jarre ever with "Zoolook" creates an emblematic work of the technological change in music during the golden '80s and also proves capable of looking beyond the mechanical horizons of "Oxygene".
In my view, still an underrated and little-known work, it would be perfectly functional and worthy of full marks if it weren't for some monotonousness and a bit too much indulgence.