Hector Zazou, the album: Sahara Blue - music based upon the poems of Arthur Rimbaud;
From a review via AllMusic:
...the album as a mix of musical styles set to lyrics/vocals taken from the pen of Arthur Rimbaud. While it might appear like a pretentious undertaking on paper, the album is a cohesive slice of eclectic music-making. Jazzy spoken word songs such as "Ophelie" intermingle with throbbing dance-oriented numbers like "I'll Strangle You" and quiet, peaceful piano-based meditations such as "Harar et les Gallas." Dead Can Dance duo Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard work their particular magic on "Youth," exchanging vocals, and on "Black Stream," where Perry's dark, somber synth weeps around Gerrard's stunning vocals and yang chin. Zazou himself mostly stays in the background, providing production and electronic sounds, allowing the players to showcase their abilities. John Cale provides two showstoppers in "First Evening" and "Hunger," his voice never sounding better. All of the musicians and vocalists turn in winning performances, so it's almost not fair to call out specific contributors. Sahara Blue is an album that could have been plodding and obscure, but instead it's mostly quite accessible and emotionally and artistically revealing. Albums dealing so heavily in mood and atmosphere are rarely as full of joy as Sahara Blue
another album: Songs of the Cold Seas. From a review in Sound on Sound
Magazine:
One of the most striking albums you're ever likely to hear is Songs From The Cold Seas, brainchild of French keyboard player, composer and sound sculptor Hector Zazou. Released earlier this year, it's a long musical voyage across the seas of the North -- the Chukchi Sea, the Greenland Sea, the North Sea, The Atlantic Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, the Barents sea, the Kara Sea, Baffin Bay, the Labrador Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Berings Sea, and many others. Eleven times during this voyage,
land was visited and
local traditional songs and rhythms were sampled and brought back. Thus Songs From The Cold Seas contains exotic singing and percussion playing from the Ainu people of Hokkaido Island, from Eskimos in Baffin Island, from shamans and Yakuti people in Siberia, joik chanting from the Sami people of Lapland, and music from more familiar Nordic places such as Finland, Sweden, Ireland, The Hebrides, Greenland, Iceland and Newfoundland
I've collected most of his music - a one of a kind musician/producer who left this world too soon
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