Silver Apples | Artist

Silver Apples were an American psychedelic electronic rock group formed 1967 in New York by Simeon Coxe (vocals, banjo, keyboards, oscillator) and Dan Taylor (drums, percussion, vocals). This highly influential but virtually unknown band was active between 1967 and 1970, then reformed in the mid-1990s. The duo were among the first to employ electronic music techniques outside of academia, applying them to 1960s rock and pop styles. As part of New York's underground music scene, the band released two albums Silver Apples (1968) and Contact (1969), to poor sales. They began recording a third album before a lawsuit by Pan Am airlines, owing to the use of their logo in the artwork of Contact, forced the end of the group and its label Kapp in 1970. Their two albums are highly recommended artifacts of early electronic pop/rock music, as is the 1998 archival release The Garden and the 2008 compilation Selections From the Early Sessions. After Taylor's death, Simeon continued releasing Silver Apples projects using samples of Taylor's drumming. The band's pulsing rhythms and electronic melodies would predate several contemporary artists, including White Noise and Can, as well as later artists including Suicide, Stereolab and Laika. Their signature sound was Simeon Coxe's primitive synthesizer, which he built himself from a collection of oscillators. According to their first LP liner notes, Simeon's gadgets eventually grew to include "nine audio oscillators piled on top of each other and eighty-six manual controls to control lead, rhythm and bass pulses with hands, feet and elbows". Simeon devised a system of telegraph keys and pedals to control tonality and chord changes, and reportedly never learned to play traditional piano-styled keyboards or synthesizers. Allmusic's Jason Ankeny called Silver Apples "a surreal, almost unprecedented duo," while Portishead's Geoff Barrow stated that "for people like us, they are the perfect band... They should definitely be up there with the pioneers of electronic music."

Artist Website: silverapples.com

Featured Albums: Silver Apples

Related Artists: Simeon Coxe

Video Clips: You and I, Doco, Oscillations