FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
St Germain - Tourist
_________
A masterpiece album…
that was released on 30th May, 2000, I think that St Germain’s Tourist was underrated at the time. Critics liked it, but it didn’t sell as much as it should have. Perhaps the Nu and Acid Jazz mix was not what people were gravitating towards in 2000. The third studio album from French producer Ludovic Navarre (St Germain), this is a wonderful thing to own on vinyl. I would definitely recommend that people get a copy. Even if 1995’s Boulevard was the debut from St Germain, I think that Tourist the finest and standout release:
“Long before the likes of Daft Punk and Air, Ludovic Navarre, better known as St Germain, was breaking new ground as one of the original french dance artists.
Tourist, first released in April 2000, is the now legendary Blue Note debut album that went on to sell over 2.8 million copies worldwide.
The critically acclaimed electronic / jazz fusion album picked up a host of awards around the globe including Number 1 Billboard Contemporary Jazz Album 2001, it was recommended as "one of the best albums of the year 2000" in Rolling Stone magazine, as well as picking up nominations of "Best French Act" at the MTV Europe music award 2001, and "Best Jazz Act" at the MOBO awards 2001.
A perfectly formed deep-house voyage, taking the listener through blends of jazz, blues, latin and hip-hop”.
There is not a lot of information out there when it comes to the making of. Because of that, I will bring in a few reviews that dip into the album and explain why it is so fantastic. Tourist is an album you have probably heard songs from before. The opening track, Rose rouge, is the best-known song from the album. Running at seven tracks and just under an hour, Tourist is an album to dedicate time to. I have been familiar with it since it was released in 2000. In the first review, this is what AllMusic wrote about St Germain’s third studio album:
“Since the advent of acid jazz in the mid-'80s, the many electronic-jazz hybrids to come down the pipe have steadily grown more mature, closer to a balanced fusion that borrows the spontaneity and emphasis on group interaction of classic jazz while still emphasizing the groove and elastic sound of electronic music. For his second album, French producer Ludovic Navarre expanded the possibilities of his template for jazzy house by recruiting a sextet of musicians to solo over his earthy productions. The opener "Rose Rouge" is an immediate highlight, as an understated Marlena Shaw vocal sample ("I want you to get together/put your hands together one time"), trance-state piano lines, and a ride-on-the-rhythm drum program frames solos by trumpeter Pascal Ohse and baritone Claudio de Qeiroz. For "Montego Bay Spleen," Navarre pairs an angular guitar solo by Ernest Ranglin with a deep-groove dub track, complete with phased effects and echoey percussion. "Land Of..." moves from a Hammond- and horn-led soul-jazz stomp into Caribbean territory, marked by more hints of dub and the expressive Latin percussion of Carneiro. Occasionally, Navarre's programming (sampled or otherwise) grows a bit repetitious -- even for dance fans, to say nothing of the jazzbo crowd attracted by the album's Blue Note tag. Though it is just another step on the way to a perfect blend of jazz and electronic, Tourist is an excellent one”.
Rolling Stone reviewed Tourist in 2000. They were impressed by what they heard. Sampling artists such as Marlena Shaw, Dave Brubeck, and Miles Davis, you get a mix of the classic and something modern. Using samples and older songs into a production and mix that has a contemporary freshness. It is not a surprise that Tourist has gained so much acclaim through years:
“On Tourist, St Germain -- the nom de mix of veteran French DJ Ludovic Navarre -- solves the great mystery of travel: how to be in two places at once. With its circular drum sizzle, real-time horns from the Kind of Blue handbook and hot-sugar samples of jazz thrush Marlena Shaw, "Rose Rouge" is a rolling joy, a wild Ibiza weekend squeezed into the Village Vanguard. In "Montego Bay Spleen," Navarre relocates the Jamaican Wes Montgomery chops of guest guitarist Ernest Ranglin to a futurist Trenchtown, part electric Miles Davis, part Sly-and-Robbie dub. And over the pillowy cadence of "Sure Thing," a digitally altered John Lee Hooker moans and plucks at his guitar like a vaporous griot, a sub-Saharan mirage of craggy Mississippi soul. A sly dog with a disciple's touch, Navarre shows respect for the spirit, if not the letter, of classic jazz. He gives his live soloists, including trumpeter Pascal Ohse and saxophonist-flutist Edouard Labor, room to breathe, if not blow wild. And Navarre manipulates with care: You're two minutes into "Latin Note" before you realize that, underneath the cafe-blues temper of the vibraphone, Navarre has gunned the percussion into a house-music gallop. Fusion without seams, swing that never flags, Tourist is a modern valentine to one of the lost joys of jazz -- as dance music. (RS 849)”.
I am going to finish off with a detailed review from Resident Advisor. Writing in 2020, Andrew Ryce wrote about his experiences with St Germain’s Tourist, noting why this album is so special. Twenty-three years after its release, it still has not aged - and it has lost none of its magic and power:
“It's 2002, and I'm 12 years old, flipping through the CD collection of my latest step-mom, who had moved into my dad's house so quickly I barely had time to meet her. One night I stayed up late to see what kind of music was in her collection. There was an enormous amount of cool, late-'90s electronic music I had only heard about before. Acid jazz like Medeski, Martin & Wood, stuff like Meat Beat Manifesto. St. Germain's Tourist, one of the most successful house albums of all time, caught my eye. The bright colours and timetable on the front cover seemed urbane and impossibly cool. When I first put it on, I felt classy listening to it, like I was living some elegant fantasy life far beyond my years and means.
Fast forward to 2020 and putting on Tourist is to transport back what feels like an incredibly specific time. Nightclubs had been chased out of New York by Giuliani's decree, as part of an overall whitewashing of the city, but house music—ever more tasteful, melodic and hip—was everywhere you looked. Not just in New York, but in London, Toronto, Los Angeles and Paris, too. At every nice restaurant, at every cocktail lounge, all over TV shows like Sex & The City. Fusion-restaurant house was ubiquitous, and French producer Ludovic Navarre's second LP was king of them all.
It's easy to deride this kind of music as derivative. And a lot of it is. But not Tourist. The album is the culmination of a successful dance music career, a nearly instrumental album that sold more than four million copies. It laid the foundations for a style that still rules the places where you can sip a $16 martini and lounge on leather cushions, a sound that still signifies some notion of taste and class for a certain subset of the world.
Tourist is revered and lampooned for the same reason: its unironic sincerity, its knack for going there. This is a record that kicks off with "Rose Rouge," a house tune built around the rhythm section from Dave Brubeck's "Take Five." And why not? "Take Five," after all, is one of the best songs of all time, and the sound of the piano and brushed drums is a shortcut to another era. Complete it with the husky vocal from a 1970s Marlene Shaw performance and a trumpet solo from Pascal Ohsé, and you start to feel like you're at a bar you can't afford, or a party you're not swanky enough to attend.
The album takes you on a trip through the sixth arrondissement neighbourhood that gave Ludovic Navarre his artist name, and through Paris beyond it. St. Germain was famous for its lively post-war jazz scene: "Rose Rouge" was the name of a cabaret; "Pont Des Arts" is a bridge that connects the sixth and first arrondissements across the Seine; "Latin Note" is a nod to the city's famous Latin Quarter, another cultural hub, next to St. Germain, while "La Guotte D'or" refers to an African neighbourhood in the 18th arrondissement.
It's also, as much of Navarre's career has been, a blend of musical styles. Tourist is discussed in the context of acid jazz or lounge house, but aside from the choice of instruments, it's much more than that. The LP touches on blues, Chicago house and, particularly, dub, an important part of the album whose influence usually goes overlooked.
Dub runs through the pulse of the best tracks on the album. "Land Of..." is one of Navarre's most accomplished tracks, effortlessly switching tack from dub to jazz rhythms—check out the piano break in the middle, which sounds like Duke Ellington's "In A Sentimental Mood"—on top of a relaxed breakbeat. This is turn-of-the-millennium dance music genre alchemy. And the Scientist-sampling "Montego Bay Spleen" features the incredible playing from Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin, who plucks and strums in languid circles around Navarre's calm dub beat. It's truly remarkable playing, not just an aesthetic gimmick.
The musicianship is another misunderstood part of Tourist. Navarre isn't simply putting down beats under jazz tracks or cutting up saxophone players from the '60s—most of the tracks feature solos laid down live by contemporary musicians, transforming Tourist from jazz-hop pastiche to a true jazz record, albeit one with a different kind of rhythm section (It even came out on the legendary jazz label Blue Note, which was dipping its toes into electronic music.) The live musicianship is what gives Tourist its panache and its most arresting details, like how the vibraphone shimmers across the stereo spectrum in glorious detail on "Latin Note."
Not that Navarre wasn't good at sampling: he takes a '90s-era collaboration between John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis and makes it the foundation for "Sure Thing," a laid-back jam that lets Hooker's guitar and voice do the talking. Hooker's angelic notes glide across the track, sounding almost inhumanly perfect at times, weaving and dipping through melodic figures in a way you'd never get on a quantized grid. Tracks like "Sure Thing" remind you that no matter the context, or how it was put together, you can't deny the soul of Tourist, which is more than the sum of its parts.
Soul is what sets Tourist apart from everything else that sounds like it. It's hard to divorce it from the clichés it helped inspire, but in this album you can hear the groundwork for musical adventures like Mala In Cuba, or the long-running Verve jazz remix series. Navarre took a glossy style often reduced to anonymity and infused it with personality”.
If you can grab Tourist on vinyl then I would definitely recommend it. If not, stream the album, as it is such a wonderfully rich album. Produced by Ludovic Navarre himself, you are lost in the hypnotising sounds offered. From the beauty and familiarity of Rose rouge to Sure Thing and What You Think About..., Tourist is a flawless album that invites you back again and again. We will be talking about this 2000 release for decades to come. It truly is…
A stunning album.