Zoolook is the seventh studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released in November 1984 by Disques Dreyfus.
For this album, Jarre used synthesizers like the Moog 55, ARP 2600, some by EMS, the LinnDrum machine, the Yamaha DX7,[10] the Matrisequencer 250 designed by French sound engineer Michel Geiss for Équinoxe (1978),[10][11] and the E-mu Emulator.
[12] 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.
[13] Sound engineer Denis Vanzetto joined Jarre's team, and later went to the Clinton studio, New York for recording American musicians chosen by Jean-Michel, among them guitarists Adrian Belew and Ira Siegel, bassist Marcus Miller, and percussionist and drummer Yogi Horton.
[8][14] After Jean-Michel read in the American newspaper The Village Voice about an exhibition held by the avant-garde singer Laurie Anderson in a New York gallery, he called and invited her to the studio to listen to his demos.
[14] 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 Jean-Michel himself and were included on the disc of the same name.
[27] Australian newspaper The Evening News commented that "is a phonetic symphony laced with catchy, funk-rock rhythms based on the intonations of various exotic languages".