| 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 album's name is a reference to the jazz song "Mood Indigo" by Duke Ellington. [2]
In 1963, Perrey and American guitarist Vinnie Bell did a session for Kai Winding, in which Perrey played the Ondioline and Bell played the guitar. After that Vinnie and Perrey recorded several successful commercials, and when Jean-Jacques got a contract with the Vanguard Records label Perrey asked him to be the guitarist on his recording sessions. [3] [4]
Perrey's version of "Flight of the Bumblebee" composed by Russian composer Rimsky Korsakov, uses real bee sounds. [5] [6] [7] 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. [8]
"Gossipo Perpetuo" versioned Moto Perpetuo written by the Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini [9] 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] "E.V.A." is a tribute to the first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong. [10] "The Elephant Never Forgets" is Perrey's adaptation of "Turkish March" composed by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, [11] [12] the middle part of the track arranged by his friend, American composer Harry Breuer. [10] "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 the 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 a 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 "there 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 described 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 website "Album of The Year" gave it an average score of 75 based on AllMusic and Exclaim! reviews. [27]
The track "E.V.A." has been 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 a 2016 Apple advertising campaign "Shot on iPhone". [35] For years, his music has been used in different entertainment media; "E.V.A." appeared in the 2018 film, Ocean's 8. [43] Mexican comedian Chespirito used some Moog Indigo pieces in 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 Mexican series El Chavo del Ocho . [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 | ||
Eva or EVA may refer to:
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.
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 invented by the American engineer Robert Moog in 1964. 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 American documentary film by Hans Fjellestad about electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog. The film features scenes of Moog interacting with various musicians who view him as an influential figure in the history of electronic music.
The Ondioline is an electronic analog synthesizer, developed and built by Frenchman Georges Jenny. Sometimes referred to as the "Jenny Ondioline," the instrument is considered a forerunner of the synthesizer. First conceived by Jenny in 1939, he continued refining and reconfiguring the device, producing dozens of variant models up until his death in 1975.
"Baroque Hoedown" is an instrumental by the duet Perrey and Kingsley. Original from 1967 album Kaleidoscopic Vibrations a follow-up to their previous 1966 album, The In Sound From Way Out!. The two albums were reissued in 1988 on one compilation album entitled The Essential Perrey and Kingsley.
Jean Marcel Leroy, better 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.
Wouter André "Wally" De Backer, known professionally as Gotye, is a Belgian-born Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His 2011 single "Somebody That I Used to Know", reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the best-selling song of 2012. This made him the fifth Australian-based artist to top the chart and the second born in Belgium.
The Ruins of Athens, Op. 113, is a set of incidental music pieces written in 1811 by Ludwig van Beethoven. The music was written to accompany the play of the same name by August von Kotzebue, for the dedication of the new Deutsches Theater Pest in Pest, Hungary.
Vincent Edward Gambella, known as Vinnie Bell, was an American session guitarist, instrument designer and pioneer of electronic effects in pop music.
El Chavo ; — also known as El Chavo del Ocho during its earliest episodes – is a Mexican television sitcom series created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños (Chespirito) and produced by Televisa. It premiered on February 26, 1973 and ended on January 7, 1980, after 8 seasons and 312 episodes, and aired across Latin America and Spain.
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:
Dana Countryman is an American electronic music composer, songwriter and performer notable for his sustained presence in the Seattle Pop scene as well as his collaborations with French electropop artist Jean-Jacques Perrey. He is also well known as songwriter and performer for The Amazing Pink Things (1985–1991). as well as the publisher for Cool and Strange Music Magazine (1996–2003). Countryman is currently composing, performing and releasing original albums of retro vocal pop. Reviewer John Borack has described Countryman as "a one-man Brill Building," in reference to the New York-based songwriting and recording scene of the 1960s.
"The Lane" is a song by American recording artist Ice-T. It was released in 1996 as a single from the rapper's sixth studio album Ice-T VI: Return of the Real through Rhyme $yndicate Records/Virgin Records. The song was written and produced by Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow and Richard "DJ Ace" Ascencio. The single peaked at number 18 in the UK. "The Lane " was later included in the rapper's greatest hits album Greatest Hits: The Evidence.
The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound of Jean Jacques Perrey is the sixth studio album by French electronic musician Jean-Jacques Perrey, released in 1968 on the Vanguard Records label.
