* En anglais uniquement
In the mid-'60s, Frenchman
Jean-Jacques Perrey -- an electronic musician who had helped popularize the Ondioline, a keyboard which produced sounds similar to the violin and the flute -- teamed up with American composer and arranger
Gershon Kingsley for a couple albums of then-futuristic electronic pop. Using tape recorders, scissors, and splicing tape, they recorded variations on pop motifs that, while kitschy from a latter-day perspective, represented the state-of-the-art in electronic sounds at the time. Two LPs,
The In Sound from Way Out! and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations, were released by Vanguard in the late '60s.
Perrey also recorded several albums of Moog music as a solo artist, and came back into vogue in the 1990s with a feature in the book Incredibly Strange Music. Everyone from
Stereolab and
µ-Ziq to
the Beastie Boys and hip-hop super-producer
Timbaland featured ideas borrowed from
Perrey-Kingsley prominently on tracks of their own, while
Perrey began recording again, both on his own and with fellow Frenchmen
Air. ~ Richie Unterberger