| En attendant Cousteau | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Jean-Michel Jarre |
| Cover: | En_attendant_Cousteau.jpg |
| Released: | 11 June 1990 |
| Studio: | Coral Sound studio, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Croissy studio, Paris |
| Length: | 1:08:57 |
| Label: | Disques Dreyfus |
| Producer: | Jean-Michel Jarre |
| Prev Title: | Revolutions |
| Prev Year: | 1988 |
| Next Title: | Images - The Best of Jean-Michel Jarre |
| Next Year: | 1991 |
En attendant Cousteau (English title: Waiting for Cousteau) is the tenth studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, released on Disques Dreyfus, licensed to Polydor. The title is a reference to the play Waiting for Godot.
Originally, Jarre intended to call it 'Cousteau sur la plage (Cousteau on the beach)', but it was changed at the last moment. A promotional tape contained this title.[1]
The album was dedicated to Jacques-Yves Cousteau and was released on his 80th birthday 11 June 1990. AllMusic described the album as "groundbreaking stuff", due to its stylistic differences from his other albums.The album reached Number 14 in the UK charts.[2]
En attendant Cousteau is divided into two distinct stylistic halves: the first three pieces titled "Calypso" and the title track, an ambient piece which was used in the soundtrack of a 1991 documentary entitled "Palawan: Le dernier refuge" by Cousteau and Jarre. However two tracks from that documentary did not appear on the final album.[3]
The title track was also played at Jarre's exposition Concert d'images in Paris, 1989. According to a Jarre fan-magazine,[4] it was created via an app on an Atari Mega-ST,[5] on which Jarre programmed 16 starting notes. He apparently got the idea from the book 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' by Douglas Adams . He denied it in a later interview, claiming all notes are actually played by hand, noting however that the track includes some time-stretched samples mixed into the background.[6]
Jarre performed the album for about 2.5 million people at the Paris La Défense concert on 14 july 1990, featuring The Amoco Renegades, a steel-drum band from Trinidad and Tobago.
Personnel listed in album liner notes:[7]
| Chart (1990) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)[8] | |
| 11 | |
| Spanish Albums (AFYVE)[9] | 37 |
!scope="row"|Worldwide||1,550,000|-