Zoolook
Jarre, the son of film composer Maurice Jarre, had already cemented his reputation as a seminal electronic/new age figure with the late-'70s albumsOxygeneandEquinoxe. But 1984'sZoolookwas a more urbane effort, fleshing out tape-looped voices with gurgling, washy synthesizers and on-the-money live players, notably Zappa/Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew and Miles Davis bassist Marcus Miller. Less cosmic pretense and more information-age irony,Zoolook, with bizarre titles like "Wooloomooloo" and "Zoolookologie" had as much to do with media-manipulators like Laurie Anderson-who also makes a cameo-as proto-ambientists like Robert Rich or Brian Eno, with whom Jarre is usually bracketed.--James Rotondi