Waiting for Cousteau (En Attendant Cousteau)

Waiting for Cousteau (French title: En Attendant Cousteau) is the seventh overall studio album by Jean Michel Jarre, released on Disques Dreyfus, licensed to Polydor, in 1990. The album was dedicated to Jacques-Yves Cousteau and was released on his 80th birthday 11 June 1990. The title of the album is a reference to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. The album has been acclaimed by critics as one of Jarre's greatest works, due to its extreme stylistic differences from his other albums, especially the title track, which Allmusic describes as "groundbreaking stuff". The album reached Number 9 in the UK charts.

The title track is a composition in the ambient style and an edited version of the music he produced for Concert d'Images, an exhibition which contained photographs and selected objects from Jarre's concerts. The original plan was to release the album edit of the track as a promo CD single, but those plans were abandoned. On vinyl and cassette tape the title track was edited to only 22 minutes due to the lack of space on the formats.

Jarre utilised the unedited version as an ambient audience "warm-up" in the hours prior to the Paris la Defense concert in 1990 (and also in many concerts after this "first"), played on the specially installed public address sound system scattered throughout Paris for this event.

Early promos for the album had the title track named "Cousteau on the Beach", but was renamed later, because Jacques-Yves Cousteau thought beaches are an environmental disaster.

The last track En Attendant Cousteau was also used in the soundtrack to a documentary entitled "Palawan: Le Dernier Refuge" by oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Track listing

"Waiting for Cousteau" -- 46:55