Global InformationEn attendant Cousteau information
| En attendant Cousteau | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by Jean-Michel Jarre | ||||
| Released | 11 June 1990 | |||
| Studio | Coral Sound studio, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Croissy studio, Paris | |||
| Length | 1:08:57 | |||
| Label | Disques Dreyfus | |||
| Producer | Jean-Michel Jarre | |||
| Jean-Michel Jarre chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
En attendant Cousteau (English title: Waiting for Cousteau) is the tenth studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released on Disques Dreyfus, licensed to Polydor. The title is a reference to the play Waiting for Godot.
Originally, Jarre intended to call it 'Cousteau sur la plage (Cousteau on the beach)', but it was changed on the last moment. A promotional tape contained this title.[2]
The album was dedicated to Jacques-Yves Cousteau and was released on his 80th birthday 11 June 1990. AllMusic described the album as "groundbreaking stuff", due to its stylistic differences from his other albums.[1] The album reached Number 14 in the UK charts.[3]
En attendant Cousteau is divided into two distinct stylistic halves: the first three pieces titled "Calypso" and the title track, an ambient piece which was used in the soundtrack of a 1991 documentary entitled "Palawan: Le dernier refuge" by Cousteau and Jarre. However two tracks from that documentary did not appear on the final album.[4]
The title track was also played at Jarre's exposition Concert d'images in Paris, 1989. According to a Jarre fan-magazine,[5] it was created via an app on an Atari Mega-ST,[6] on which Jarre programmed 16 starting notes. He apparently got the idea from the book 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' by Douglas Adams . He denied it in a later interview, claiming all notes are actually played by hand, noting however that the track includes some time-stretched samples mixed into the background.[7]
Jarre performed the album for about 2.5 million people at the Paris La Défense concert on 14 july 1990, featuring The Amoco Renegades, a steel-drum band from Trinidad and Tobago.
- ^ a b En attendant Cousteau at AllMusic
- ^ "aerozonejmj". aerozonejmj.fr. 2014-03-27. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
- ^ "UK Music charts". EveryHit.com. Retrieved 2008-02-14.
- ^ "Aerozonejmj". aerozonejmj.fr. 2019-03-03. Retrieved 2023-11-04.
- ^ Conductor Of The Masses - Issue 5. UK: Conceptual Publishing. July 1991. p. 30.
- ^ AMI (Algorithmic Musical Instrument) By Cadenza Software. However, likely the name should be ACT (Algorithmic Compositional Tool), which "generates random musical output, based on user-defined notes, which can be controlled in real time using a GEM interface or a MIDI source", as listed on https://www.ataritoday.com/extra/.
- ^ "Aerozonejmj". aeorozonejmj.fr. 2019-01-19. Retrieved 2024-04-22.