Jean-Jacques Perrey, the French composer and electronic music pioneer, died yesterday following a battle with lung cancer, Rolling Stone reports. He was 87.

Perrey was born in France in 1929. After meeting Georges Jenny, the inventor of the Ondioline, while studying medicine in Paris in the 1950s, he left school to travel throughout Europe demonstrating the early electronic keyboard. In the ’60s, he relocated to New York to compose musique concrète, eventually befriending Robert Moog and becoming one of the first musicians to use the Moog synthesizer.

In 1965, Perrey formed the duo Perrey And Kingsley with fellow electronic music pioneer Gershon Kingsley, releasing two influentials albums, 1966’s The In Sound From The Way Out and 1967’s Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Electronic Pop Music From Way Out. His music has been sampled by the Beatles, A Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Gang Starr, and more, and the Beastie Boys’ 1996 instrumental album The In Sound From The Way Out was inspired by the Perrey And Kingsley album of the same name.