En attendant Cousteau

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.

En attendant Cousteau
Studio album by Jean-Michel Jarre
Released	11 June 1990
Studio	Coral Sound studio, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Croissy studio, Paris
Length	68:57
Label	Disques Dreyfus
Producer	Jean-Michel Jarre
Jean-Michel Jarre chronology
Revolutions (1988) En attendant Cousteau (1990) Images - The Best of Jean-Michel Jarre (1991)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]

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.^[2]

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.^[1] The album reached Number 14 in the UK charts.^[3]

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 title track from documentary did not appear on En attendant Cousteau.^[4]

The title track was also played at Jarre's exposition Concert d'images in Paris, 1989. According to a Jarre fan-magazine,^[5] it was created via an app on an Atari Mega-ST,^[6] 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.^[7][8]

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.

Track listing

CD edition

All music is composed by Jean-Michel Jarre.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Calypso Part 1"	8:24
2.	"Calypso Part 2"	7:10
3.	"Calypso Part 3 (Fin de Siècle)" (End of the Century)	6:28
4.	"En attendant Cousteau" (Waiting for Cousteau)	46:55
Total length:		1:08:57

Vinyl and cassette edition

Side one

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Calypso Part 1"	8:24
2.	"Calypso Part 2"	7:10
3.	"Calypso Part 3 (Fin de Siècle)"	6:28

Side two

No.	Title	Length
1.	"En attendant Cousteau"	22:00
Total length:		44:02

Personnel

Personnel listed in album liner notes:^[9]

• Jean-Michel Jarre – keyboards
• The Amoco Renegades – steel drums
• Guy Delacroix – bass
• Christophe Deschamps – drums
• Michel Geiss – keyboards
• Dominique Perrier – keyboards

Charts

Chart (1990)	Peak position
Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)[10]	19
Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)[11]	11
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[12]	27
Spanish Albums (AFYVE)[13]	37
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[14]	22
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[15]	21
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[16]	27
Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[17]	11
UK Albums (OCC)[18]	14

Certifications and sales

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
France (SNEP)[19]	2× Gold	550,000[20]
Spain (PROMUSICAE)[21]	Gold	50,000^
Summaries
Worldwide		1,550,000[20]
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.