Recorded in 2000 and not available in the United States until 2004,
Metamorphoses
is another of those enormous productions by the French
electronic
music master. Offering a cycle of songs,
Jarre
and his platoon of keyboards -- a wonderful meld of cutting-edge and vintage technologies -- delve into the notion of change and evolution with a remarkable efficiency despite the plethora of guest vocalists and instrumentalists. His collaborations with
Laurie Anderson
(
"Je me souviens"
) and
Natacha Atlas
"C'est la Vie"
) are wonderfully successful. The former is a staggered sequencer-driven track whose pulse varies, throbs, and wanes as the vocals are articulated in syncopated fashion in alternating cadences. The latter is an Eastern-tinged
house
track, where elements of
disco
,
breakbeat
, and even
jungle
enter and leave the mix after leaving traces of themselves on what follows their articulation.
Atlas
sings and wails and whispers, following sequences of broken beats and ushering in
acid house
pulsations as a lonesome violins caresses the proceedings and the cut breaks wide open in a frenzy of longing and increasing tempos before a trancey set of beats takes it out. Other vocalists include
Lisa Jacobs
"Millions of Stars"
),
Dierdre Dubois
"Miss Moon"
), and
Veronique Bossa
"Give Me a Sign"
) Because of its many colors,
is the most adventurous recording of
's in a decade, and articulates his universal language of transcultural musicality and futuristic altruism fantastically. ~ Thom Jurek