Partnered again with Seattle-based composer/arranger Dana Countryman, as he was on 2006's The Happy Electropop Music Machine, 79-year-old
Jean-Jacques Perrey is up to his old tricks on
Destination Space, another collection of synthesizer-based eclectic pop music. The year may be 2008, but
Perrey's sensibility is rooted in the '60s, and his wide range of influences includes lots of film music by the likes of
Ennio Morricone,
Henry Mancini, and others, plus popular styles from country to Caribbean. All of it is played with the sort of Moog synthesizer sounds that seemed so futuristic in the late '60s and early '70s, and so silly and novelty-like immediately after and ever since. Listeners will have trouble keeping smiles off their faces listening to this fruity stuff, and the composers are very much in on the joke.
Perrey himself is heard here and there making comments in what is otherwise largely instrumental music, and a computerized voice sings "Beyond the Milky Way" at the end, looking to a post-human future out there in the universe. This is not an album to take seriously, but it is one to enjoy. ~ William Ruhlmann