Gershon Kingsley was a German-American Vanguard Records arranger since 1964, he fled Nazi Germany to reach then Mandatory Palestine (present-day Israel) a few days before Kristallnacht in 1938.
[2][3] After World War II he came to Los Angeles in 1946, where he studied at the Conservatory of Music, adopted the pseudonym Gershon in tribute to the son of Moses and worked in Broadway productions.
[6] At the Studio of Contemporary Music Research in France, Perrey met Pierre Schaeffer, who had pioneered the avant-garde sound art form known as musique concrète.
[11][12] The two spent 275 hours producing and recording the album,[13] Perrey also played Ondioline, provided musique concrète "rhythmic patterns",[14] and mixed his tape loops and "inventive melodies" with Kingsley's arrangements and instrumentation.
[20][21] "Visa To The Stars", co-written by Angelo Badalamenti (under the pseudonym "Andy Badale") was released as promotional single in March 1967 with "Spooks In Space" as B side.
[22][23] In his album review, Billboard stated that the "recording of electronic pop music created by Gershon Kingsley and Jean Jacques Perrey is so far out it may become in.
"[15] In AllMusic, Richie Unterberger wrote that "this early attempt to bring electronic music to the masses is commendable" and that "is cheesy enough to skirt the boundaries of kitsch, with a boxy, mechanical texture and a music-box-run-amok feel."
[24] In that same year they performed on the American game show "I've Got a Secret" in which Perrey imitated four orchestral instruments with the Ondioline, and then played with Kingsley one of the album tracks ("Spooks In Space", an electronic version of Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre).
[26][4] It is a mix between original tracks by Perrey and Kingsley like "The Savers" or "Fallout" and synthesized interpretations of "Umbrellas of Cherbourg", "Strangers In The Night", "Lover's Concerto", "Third Man Theme", Winchester Cathedral, Moon River, Mas que Nada and other pop songs from time.
[39] In 1968, "The Savers", from Kaleidoscopic Vibrations, won a Clio Award when it was used as the soundtrack for a No-Cal diet soft drink commercial;[14][7][2] later it would be used as opening theme from the American television game show The Joker's Wild since 1972 to 1975.
[20][44][45] In 1997, the Alternative rock band Smash Mouth released Walkin' on the Sun, a single whose bassline and opening melody is based on the track "Swan's Splashdown".