Zoolook is the seventh studio album by the 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 human voices in 25 different languages from all over the world. The sample-based approach, which had been initiated on Les Chants Magnétiques (1981) and continued on Music for Supermarkets (1983), was expanded on this album. Some fragments were recorded digitally by Jarre and then played back and edited on the Fairlight CMI. This process was done together with Frederick Rousseau for three months.
Some of the vocals were recorded during Jean-Michel's travels, while others are instead the result of his work with Xavier Bellanger, a French ethnologist who during his travels recorded "a large collection of tapes". For this album, Jarre used synthesizers like the Moog 55, ARP 2600, some by EMS, the LinnDrum machine, the Yamaha DX7, the Matrisequencer 250 designed by French sound engineer Michel Geiss for Equinoxe (1978), and the E-mu Emulator. The different languages as listed in the album's liner notes are: Aboriginal, Afghan, Arabic, Balinese, Bengali, Chinese, Dutch, English, Eskimo, French, German, Hungarian, Indian, Japanese, Malagasy, Malayan, Pygmy, Polish, Quechua, Russian, Sioux, Spanish, Swedish, Tibetan, and Turkish. More aurally challenging than Jarre's previous works, the album was also somewhat less successful, reaching only number 47 in the UK album charts. 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 and featured twelve robots designed by Marc Caro, of which only one was kept after filming. The video of "Zoolookologie" was directed by Rod McCall and produced by Frank Coppola in London, UK. It "shows three models flirting with the artist in a provocative fantasy". and in April 1985 it won the best instrumental album of the year award at the Victoires de la Musique. 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 winners such as Luke Vibert, Zeka Lopez, Mikael Seifu, Simonne Jones and KIZ were chosen by Jarre and included on the disc of the same name.