Archives for April 2021

We are in 2021 now but I still remember my brother and I first listening to Zoolookologie around 1985-1986. Even though we were using cassettes on a very basic Tatung sound system, the music sounded great. The sampled voices and the synth sounds were out of this world.

Jean-Michel Jarre had released Zoolook, his 7th album in 1984. Even though, people consider albums such as Oxygène, Equinoxe and Les Chants Magnétiques as being better, I liked Zoolook more, for its novelty and energy. Listening to that track brings so many good memories: it was at that time that my brother and I start feeling an urge to learn how to play and compose music I think.

At that time, the pre-MTV and pre-YouTube era, there were no videos on TV and I have to say that the Zoolookologie video, while dated of course, is beautiful in its own special way. 37 years after, the music and the video are still good and this is testament to how good Jean-Michel Jarre actually is. And he looks so young in the video…

I apologise. The video is of very low quality (240p!) but the audio quality is good. This is Air playing Love live in 2009. Air are an electronic music duo from France who released a critically acclaimed debut album, Moon Safari, in 1998. They then did the soundtrack of Sofia Coppola’s first movie, The Virgin Suicides, and a number of other albums including Love 2, from which Love is taken.

When I listen to Air, I sometimes get a Pink Floyd vide but in a modern way, mixed with some smooth Jazz. Interestingly, some of their tracks are good house or even techno tracks too. My favourite album is not Love 2 in fact but rather 10,000Hz which I got on CD twenty years ago and which still sounds amazing. My favourite song on it is Radian and it’s a 7:30 masterpiece.

I’ve been listening to music since I was a kid but, because I also play music, I really value every track I listen to. I sincerely believe, now, that there is no bad music. There is only music I like and music which, for some reason, I do not like. People have different taste. And that’s fine.

This is not a video of Aphex Twin. Rather, it’s from a guy called Gizuco who is having some fun with sequences of Tha played on a Moog Minitaur, a Roland SH-01A and a Waldorf Streichfett. Music is fun. Listening. Composing. Playing. Whatever.

What I like about this video is that it combines two of my greatest passions: listening to good music and making music. I believe that, as a music maker, one can better understand the intent of composers, why certain choices were made, why this chord instead of another one, etc. Everyone should learn how to play some music. Do you know that music was part of maths in ancient Greece at the times of Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle?

Aphex Twin, whose real name is Richard David James, is one of my favourite electronic musicians. He’s one of the most inventive in IDM (intelligent dance music) and electronic music in general. He has influenced countless others. Tha was released in 1992 on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85–92 album.