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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.
Perrey's version of "Flight of the Bumblebee" composed by Russian composer Rimsky Korsakov, uses real bee sounds. Perrey stated how he made this version to the Computer Music Journal magazine:
For this composition, I took a Nagra 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 Chromatic 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.Fourier, Laurent, "Jean-Jacques Perrey and the Ondioline", Computer Music Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 1994, MIT Press
"Gossipo Perpetuo" versioned Moto Perpetuo written by the Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini 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." "E.V.A." is a tribute to the first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong. "The Elephant Never Forgets" is Perrey's adaptation of "Turkish March" composed by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, the middle part of the track arranged by his friend, American composer Harry Breuer. "18Th Century Puppet" shows clear nods to the baroque composition, and "Hello, Dolly!" by Jerry Herman was versioned.
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." 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". Moog Indigo was ranked as the 66th best album of 1970 by uDiscover Music. The website "Album of The Year" gave it an average score of 75 based on AllMusic and Exclaim! reviews.
In 2004, "E.V.A." featured in a Zelnorm commercial, and in a 2016 Apple advertising campaign "Shot on iPhone". For years, his music has been used in different entertainment media; "E.V.A." appeared in the 2018 film, Ocean's 8. Mexican comedian Chespirito used some Moog Indigo pieces in his television series: "Country Rock Polka" was used in his namesake series, and "The Elephant Never Forgets" was used as the theme song for the Mexican series El Chavo del Ocho. The latter also was the main theme of the Canadian TV program The Buck Shot Show.
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