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Saint Germain
The Musical Tourist
06/06/2000 -
St Germain exploded onto the international music scene in 1995, selling 200,000 copies of his album Boulevard - and his achievements didn't stop there! Boulevard was hailed as Best Album of the Year in the U.K. and even went on to receive a sought-after nomination for the Dance Music Awards in London where Saint Germain found himself competing against the likes of Goldie, D'Angelo and Michael Jackson.
Ludovic Navarre discovered electronica a few years before the release of his best-selling Boulevard when, convalescing from a serious accident, he began experimenting with computer-generated music. Computers soon became a veritable passion in his life and Ludovic started messing around in the studio creating his own eclectic mixes, making unlikely musical bedfellows of techno and jazz, house and dub and blues and ambient sounds. Ludovic began to attract increasing attention with his innovative fusions. Most famously, he sampled an old American bluesman on Alabama Blues in 1995 and, under an increasingly weird collection of pseudonyms (Deep Side, Soofle, Modus Vivendi, LN'S and Nuages), went on to break down all kinds of musical boundaries. Ludovic was also in much demand for his mixing skills and over the years he re-mixed work by everyone from Cape Verdean star Boy Gé Mendes and Pierre Henry (author of the renowned Messe pour un temps présent). 
Ludovic then went on to team up with a jazz ensemble from Saint-Germain-en-Laye (featuring Pascal Ohsé on trumpet, Edouard Labor on sax and flute, Alexandre Destrez on keyboards and Edmondo Carneiro on percussion). Following in the footsteps of his great namesake, the Count of St Germain, who dazzled the royal court in the 18th century with his prodigious memory, his story-telling feats and his famous seances, Ludovic wowed 20th-century audiences with his fusion talents, bringing the house down when he performed at the "Transmusicales de Rennes" in 1995 and at the "Printemps de Bourges" festival the following year.
Now, after five years' silence, Ludovic has made a stylish comeback with his long-awaited new album Tourist. The nine tracks on this new album display an impressive musical maturity and sparkle with the habitual Saint Germain eclecticism. Rose Rouge (a sort of Parisian version of Take A-Five) features a fine performance by guest vocalist Marlena Shaw while What you think about? is a brilliantly moody piece which could have come straight off the soundtrack from a 1970's American thriller. On the excellent Latin Note Saint Germain experiments with Latin jazz, letting his percussion section run riot, and then it's on to Montego Bay Spleen (featuring Ernest Ranglin), jazzified dub with Wes Montgomery, African/Middle Eastern fusion on La Goutte d'Or, "flute house" on So Flute and infectious Jimmy-Smith-style organ on Land Of.
In short, Saint Germain takes us on a comprehensive tour of Paris, revisiting the legendary smoke-filled jazz haunts of the Left Bank before flitting off to the new multi-ethnic neighbourhoods on the "Rive Droite Est".
St Germain Tourist Blue Note 2000
Emmanuel Dumesnil
