release date: Jun. 11, 1990
format: digital
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,22]
producer: Jean Michel Jarre
label: Polydor / Disques Dreyfus - nationality: France
Track highlights: 4. "Waiting for Cousteau"
10th studio album by Jean Michel Jarre released after his most recent album Revolutions (1988) is a somewhat unusual album from Jarre. It's not just music of his ordinary progressive, synthpop with complex compositions but for the most part builds on simple instrumental harmonies and chorus-lines - at least when it comes to 3/4 of the album's tracks.
Frankly, I find the first three tracks more than just boring with the first "Calypso" as a near disastrously naive and tedious composition, but the fourth and final (title) track, with its playing time at almost 47 mins [!], is the album's true gem. It's a slow progressive ambient and new age composition, where Jarre dwells at small changes of sound. I often come to think of Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" upon listening to this track as it opens a simplistic tone and through various loops extends itself like an organic wall or pond of simple yet rather complex music, but again: a rather unconventional composition for Jarre. However, this final track saves the whole album.
[ allmusic.com hands it 4,5 / 5 stars ]
