Wikipedia
Zoolook is the fourth overall mainstream studio album by Jean Michel Jarre, and released on the Disques Dreyfus label in 1984. It makes extensive use of digital recording techniques and sampling. Much of the music is built up from singing and speech in 25 different languages, along with synthesizers (such as the Fairlight CMI), as well as more traditional instruments. Much of the tone of the album appears to be influenced by elements of musique concrète and by his time as a student of Pierre Schaeffer.
Parts of the album, like the tracks "Blah Blah Café" and the second half of the track "Diva", were reworkings of material that had already appeared as sections of the album Music for Supermarkets, released the previous year. The track "Moon Machine" was recorded for inclusion on Zoolook but did not appear on the final release; it later appeared, first on a flexidisc included with Keyboard Magazine (March 1986 issue), the 12-inch single of the Special Remix of " Fourth Rendez-Vous" (1986), and the much later Images compilation album (1991).
The voices heard on this album were based on recordings of speech and singing in numerous languages: Aboriginal, Afghan, Arabic, Balinese, Buhndi, Chinese, Dutch (Ethnicolor II - 3:15), English, Eskimo, French, German, Hungarian, Indian, Japanese, Malagasy, Malayan, Pygmy, Polish, Quechua, Russian, Sioux, Spanish, Swedish, Tibetan and Turkish.
The album spawned two singles: the title track and "Zoolookologie". Both were released in remixed forms as both 7" and 12" singles, the latter format including extended remixes by François Kevorkian. A further extended remix version of "Zoolook", produced by Razormaid!, has also been released.
After the initial album release, subsequent ones for Polydor and Dreyfus in 1985 included these remixed 7" versions as the canonical album tracks (see track listings below). However, when Jarre's catalogue was remastered and re-released by Sony's Epic label in the mid-1990s, the original versions were once again reinstated. The track "Diva" is also slightly shorter on the second release.
Zoolook is one of the first compact discs labeled as DDD: digitally recorded, mixed and mastered. However, ironically, the CD edition from Sony in 2015 claims to be "remastered from the original analogue [sic] tapes".