St. Germain: Tourist : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

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)

DAVID FRICKE