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, Rovi