Songwriter & synthesist Wally De Backer (Gotye) has launched a new website, dedicated to electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey.

Jean-Jacques Perrey (1929–2016) was a French electronic music pioneer, who brought instruments like the Ondioline and Moog modular synthesizer to a mainstream audience.

He’s probably best known for his collaborations with Gershon Kingsley. As Perrey and Kingsley, they released some of the first albums featuring the Moog modular, including the space age pop classic, The In Sound From Way Out!

Here’s what De Backer has to say about the new site:

“People say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but for me, Jean-Jacques Perrey was an exception.

It was one of my life’s great joys to meet Jean-Jacques and get to know him as a friend in his later years. Not only was he uniquely creative and visionary in his music work, he was also an incredibly kind and generous human being.

Jean-Jacques was a French pioneer of electronic music whose work spans the rarest avant-garde gems to the most mass-market earworms. Over the years I’ve curated and released compilations of his lost and rare Ondioline music, and performed tribute concerts with an ensemble called the Ondioline Orchestra.

I’m excited to announce the release of a personal labor of love, published by my nonprofit, Forgotten Futures. Our new archival website celebrates Jean-Jacques, his fascinating early history, influences, and his truly inventive work.

This project is a tribute not only to Jean-Jacques’ music, but to his legacy as a human being—an artist whose imagination, humor, and warmth continue to inspire.”

Links:

• Jean-Jacques Perrey– new site, dedicated to the electronic music pioneer.
• Forgotten Futures – a non-profit organization, founded by Wally De Backer, that’s dedicated to reviving lost and forgotten yet vital artifacts of electronic musical instrument history.