JEAN-JACQUES PERREY AND DAVID CHAZAM: ECLECTIC TO THE END

Jean-Jacques Perrey and David Chazam: What’s Up Duck? + An Elephant On the Roof
From Eclektronics (Basenotic, 1998)

I had been meaning to write a post about this Jean-Jacques Perrey/David Chazam LP for a long time and just never got around to it and then JJP passed away earlier this month and that reminded me to get back to it.

This came out in the late ’90s, a collaboration between Perrey – by then, a veritable legend amongst synthesizer aficionados – and Chazam, a younger Gen X-era musician/composer who I presume sought JJP out and convinced him come back into the studio for the first time in 15 years.

As you can hear, Eclektronics was quite the whimsical album. “What’s Up Duck?” initially sounds like a novelty track but Perrey and Chazam are doing more than messing with animal noises off a sampling keyboard. “What’s Up Duck?” brings an instant smile to me but “An Elephant On the Roof” is a more sophisticated and complex composition in terms of how it shifts and transforms along the way. This probably won’t edge out Moog Indigo on anyone’s want list but if you’ve never peeped it, I highly recommend.