Among the rare producers genuinely merging jazz and house, Frenchman Ludovic Navarre launched his recording work in the early 1990s under assorted pseudonyms—Subsystem, Modus Vivendi, and Deepside—across multiple French labels. St. Germain first appeared in 1994 on Laurent Garnier’s F Communications imprint, and Navarre delivered his debut album Boulevard two years later. The set featured trumpeter Pascal Ohse and fused American R&B and jazz with the rising French house movement led by Garnier, La Funk Mob, and Dimitri from Paris. Tourist, issued by Blue Note at the century’s turn, pushed the idea ahead as Navarre applied post-production to a larger roster of players. He has also reworked tracks by artists as disparate as Björk, Pierre Henry, and the Suburban Knight.
Signing with Nonesuch as St. Germain in early 2015, Navarre revealed in May a self-titled album—his first collection of new material in fifteen years. Longtime admiration for Malian music guided the sessions, which took place in his Paris studio and enlisted Brazilian percussionist Jorge Bezerra, Malian kora player Mamadou Cherif Soumano, Malian guitarist and n’goni player Guimba Kouyate, and longtime Martiniquais keyboardist associate Didier Davidas. The advance single “Real Blues” surfaced in May, and the album followed in October.
