| Moog Indigo | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1970 | |||
| Genre | Electronic [1] | |||
| Length | 31:09 | |||
| Label | Vanguard | |||
| Producer | Jean-Jacques Perrey | |||
| Jean-Jacques Perrey chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Moog Indigo | ||||
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Moog Indigo is the ninth studio album by the French electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey, released in 1970 on the Vanguard Records label. The name album is a reference to Jazz song "Mood Indigo" by Duke Ellington. [2]
In 1963 Perrey with the American guitarist Vinnie Bell did a session for Kai Winding, in which Perrey played the Ondioline and Bell played the guitar. After that Vinnie along with Perrey recorded several successful commercials and when Jean-Jacques got a contract with the Vanguard Records label. Perrey asked him to be the lead guitarist for his recording sessions as "Soul City" and "E.V.A.". [3] [4] The latter is a tribute to the first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong. [5]
Perrey's version of "Flight of the Bumblebee" composed by Russian composer Rimsky Korsakov, uses real bee sounds. [6] [7] [8] Perrey stated how he made this version to the Computer Music Journal magazine:
For this composition, I took a Nagra tape recorder to an apiary in Switzerland to record the live sounds of bees buzzing about their hive. I took these bee tapes back to New York, where my studio had a variable-speed tape recorder. Using this machine, I transposed the bee buzzes to the subdivisions of the 12-tone equal-tempered scale and rerecorded them on another tape machine. Then, using manual splicing techniques, I edited the melody for one verse. Just this part took 52 hours of splicing work. People told me that I was crazy, but I told them to listen to the result! We added an accompaniment to the melody, recreating the "Flight of the Bumblebee" played by living bees. [9]
"Gossipo Perpetuo" versioned Moto Perpetuo written by the Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini [10] and also used "stuttering vocal samples" and "various Moog settings soaring up and down the scale while congas and shuffling drums hit a samba beat." [4] "The Elephant Never Forgets" is a Perrey's adaptation of "Turkish March" composed by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. [11] [12] His middle part was arranged by American composer Harry Breuer. [5] "18Th Century Puppet" shows clear nods to the baroque composition, [1] and "Hello, Dolly!" by Jerry Herman was versioned. [13]
Moog Indigo was released on Vanguard Records label in 1970, being Perrey's fourth and final studio album to be released on that label. [14] [15] The album was followed by the single "Passport to the Future", which reached No. 20 on the Adult Contemporary (known at the time as Easy Listening) and No. 106 on the Billboard Hot 100. [16] [17] The song also reached #94 in the Cashbox Singles chart. [18] In 1997 when Fatboy Slim remixed the track "E.V.A.", [19] it was released as single on 15 February, peaked at #79 in British charts [20] and also had a music video. [21] In 2017, Moog Indigo was reissued in a 180 gram 12-inch-Vinyl format by Vanguard label. [22] [23]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [24] |
| Exclaim! | 9/10 [1] |
| Paste |    [4] |
Retrospective reviews of the album have been generally favorable. Alan Ranta from Exclaim! magazine declared that "are countless creative opportunities to be found in this half-hour trip that have yet to be fully explored, and for the rest of us, it's an opportunity to experience a landmark album of electronic pop that stands the test of time." [1] Robert Ham of Paste magazine stated that "what keeps these records in circulation is the humor that artists like Perrey brought into the mix and how the sounds and spirit found within the grooves call to mind an era when the skies suddenly felt limitless." [4]
The Musoscribe website commented that Perrey's work should not be taken in the same context as other pioneers of electronic music such as Jean-Michel Jarre or Hans-Joachim Roedelius since: "His work wasn't as edgy and experimental as that of those other guys." He also felt that it "is a collection of incredibly catchy tunes, delivered in the funnest way imaginable." [25] A retrospective review by AllMusic reviewer Donald A. Guarisco describing the album as "a solid choice for fans of the room with a sense of humor". [24] Moog Indigo was ranked as the 66th best album of 1970 by uDiscover Music. [26] The Album of the Year website gave it an average score of 75 based on AllMusic and Exclaim! reviews. [27]
"E.V.A." was sampled numerous times by hip-hop and rap artists. [28] Notable examples include "Just To Get A Rep" by Gang Starr (1990), [29] [30] [31] [32] "Lower da Boom" by Artifacts (1994), [33] "Gameplan" by Lord Finesse (1995), [34] "3000" by Dr.Octagon (1996), [35] "Same Ol'Thing" by A Tribe Called Quest (1997), [36] "Lunch Money" by Pusha T (2014), [37] [38] [39] [40] and "Every Little Thing I Do" by Jamila Woods and Taylor Bennett (2017). [41]
In 2004, "E.V.A." featured in a Zelnorm commercial [42] and in an 2016 Apple advertising campaign "Shot on iPhone". [35] For years, his music was used in different entertainment media; "E.V.A." appeared in the 2018 film, Ocean's 8. [43] Mexican comedian Roberto Gomez Bolaños (most known professionally as Chespirito) used some Moog Indigo pieces for his television series: "Country Rock Polka" was used in his namesake series , [44] [45] and "The Elephant Never Forgets" was used as the theme song for the series El Chavo del 8. [46] [47] The latter also was the main theme of the Canadian TV program The Buck Shot Show . [48]
Side A
All tracks are written by Jean-Jacques Perrey, except where noted.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Soul City" |
| 2:05 |
| 2. | "E.V.A." |
| 3:11 |
| 3. | "The Rose and the Cross" | Gilbert Sigrist | 2:39 |
| 4. | "Cat in the Night" |
| 3:34 |
| 5. | "Flight of the Bumblebee" | Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. by
| 2:11 |
| 6. | "Moog Indigo" |
| 2:57 |
Side B
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Gossipo Perpetuo" | Paganini, arr. by
| 2:09 |
| 2. | "Country Rock Polka" |
| 2:31 |
| 3. | "The Elephant Never Forgets" | Beethoven, arr. by
| 2:29 |
| 4. | "18Th Century Puppet" | Mozart, arr. by
| 2:41 |
| 5. | "Hello, Dolly!" | Jerry Herman, arr. by
| 2:00 |
| 6. | "Passport to the Future" | Paul Mauriat and André Pascal, arr. by
| 2:42 |
| Total length: | 31:09 | ||
In music, tape loops are loops of magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound when played on a tape recorder. Originating in the 1940s with the work of Pierre Schaeffer, they were used among contemporary composers of 1950s and 1960s, such as Éliane Radigue, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who used them to create phase patterns, rhythms, textures, and timbres. Popular music authors of 1960s and 1970s, particularly in psychedelic, progressive and ambient genres, used tape loops to accompany their music with innovative sound effects. In the 1980s, analog audio and tape loops with it gave way to digital audio and application of computers to generate and process sound.
"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900. Its composition is intended to musically evoke the seemingly chaotic and rapidly changing flying pattern of a bumblebee. Despite the piece's being a rather incidental part of the opera, it is today one of the more familiar classical works because of its frequent use in popular culture.
Perrey and Kingsley was an electronic music duo made up of French composer Jean-Jacques Perrey and German-American composer Gershon Kingsley. The duo lasted from 1965 to 1967 and both are considered pioneers of electronic music. They released under Vanguard Records two studio albums The In Sound From Way Out! and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations. They also were among the first artists to incorporate the Moog synthesizer, prior to the successful 1968 release, Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos.
Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was a primarily classical label at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal jazz, folk, and blues musicians. The Bach Guild was a subsidiary label.
The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 2014. It was the first commercial synthesizer and established the analog synthesizer concept.
Gershon Kingsley was a German-American composer, a pioneer of electronic music and the Moog synthesizer, a partner in the electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, founder of the First Moog Quartet, and writer of rock-inspired compositions for Jewish religious ceremonies. Kingsley is most famous for his 1969 influential electronic instrumental composition "Popcorn".
Moog is a 2004 documentary film by Hans Fjellestad about electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog. The film features scenes of Moog interacting with various musical artists who view him as an influential figure in the history of electronic music.
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Jean Marcel Leroy, popularly known as Jean-Jacques Perrey, was a French electronic music performer, composer, producer, and promoter. He is considered a pioneer of pop electronica. Perrey partnered with composer-performer Gershon Kingsley to form the electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, who issued some of the first commercial recordings featuring the Moog synthesizer. Perrey was also one of the first to promote, perform, and record with the Ondioline, developed by Georges Jenny.
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The Turkish March is a classical march theme by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was written for the 1809 Six variations, Op. 76, and in the Turkish style. Later in 1811, Beethoven included the Turkish March in a play by August von Kotzebue called The Ruins of Athens, which premiered in Budapest, Hungary in 1812.
Moog may refer to:
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