Waiting for Cousteau

Waiting for Cousteau — En attendant Cousteau in French — is a tribute to the oceanographer, and an album of two halves that shouldn't fit together but do.

The first is the three-part "Calypso" suite, named after Cousteau's ship. For it Jarre brought in The Amoco Renegades, a steel-drum band from Trinidad and Tobago, recording with them at Coral Sound Studio in Port of Spain. The result is a remarkable if somewhat peculiar fusion: the steel pans bright and upbeat on Part 1, more orthodox synth territory on Part 2, and something slower and almost stately on Part 3, subtitled "Fin de Siècle". Real bass and drums give the suite a weight his records rarely carry.

Then the album stops moving. The title track runs close to 47 minutes — an epic minimalist piece, piano figures drifting over sustained synthesiser, built to be lived in rather than followed. It's the furthest out on a limb Jarre had gone since 1976.

Released in 1990 on Disques Dreyfus / Polydor. Recorded in Trinidad and at Croissy Studio, Paris, with Dominique Perrier and Michel Geiss on keyboards, Guy Delacroix on bass and Christophe Deschamps on drums; steel drums tuned by Bertram Kellman.