Silver Apples and Spectrum ‎– "A Lake Of Teardrops" (Space Age Recordings ‎– ORBIT 016CD) 1999

What a nice career junkie Pete 'Sonic Boom' Kember was? Rescuing all these forgotten electronic heroes from the trash heap. Like Delia Derbyshire, respect due, Peter Zinovieff, and Simeon Coxe of the Silver Apples.
Recorded in Coventry(uk) no less,whose concrete brutalist vista's of fly-overs and piss soaked underpasses seem to suit electronic music far more than those horrible Ska-revival bands that the place is more famed for.
If this was the Apples fourth album,it may have rivaled 'Contact' as their best. A drug hazed electronic fog of bleeps,swirls and analogue sweeps that would have fit nicely tacked onto the end of an episode of Dr Who in 1963.

Tracklist:

1 Streams Of Sorrow 5:12
2 Sixth Sense 0:55
3 The Edge 4:17
4 Second Sight 0:31
5 Whirlwind 5:22
6 (I Don't Care If You) Never Come Back 2:36

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Silver Apples - "The Garden" (Whirlybird Records ‎– WR109) 1970/1998

Ozzy Osbourne and Dan Taylor examine the running order of the completed  and notoriously difficult Third album.

With all the renewed interest in the mid-nineties,not that there was any interest when they were around the first time, The Silver Apples took this opportunity to finish the mythical 'Third' album that they had started to record in 1969,until Pan-Am fucked it all up for them.
Simeon told me that it was "Too Commercial",but the evidence dismisses that claim.It's not commercial at all, just a little bit crap.....but not as crap as those albums Simeon did with Xian Hawkins before he rediscovered Dan to finish "The Garden" and tour Europe.
The Can-like repetition,Simeon and The Simeon's primitive electronics are still there,and so is Coxe's warbling vocals. There's also some ill-advised cover tunes,which I'm sure would have been dropped from the finished LP originally;maybe that was the commercial aspect which Simeon was referring to?
There's about four decent Silver Apples style tunes on here that stand uo to those on 'Contact',even if "Walkin'" starts off like a remake of "You're Not Foolin' Me"....well they're not foolin' me!
Sounding like the kind of bonus disc material which blights every remastered classic album since 1990,this is not prime Apples, but it's still an intriguing listening experience.Especially like the instrumental jams,or noodles as they call them.
Sadly just after it's eventual release, Simeon was put out of action for 5 or 6 years after breaking his neck in a tour bus crash.Athough Dan died in 2005, Simeon is still playing as the Silver apples into his eighties, using recordings of Dan's drumming to augment the one man band aspect.


Tracklist:

1.I Don't Care What The People Say 3:08
2.Tabouli Noodle 4:18
3.Walkin' 4:07
4.Cannonball Noodle 5:29
5.John Hardy 2:22
6.Cockroach Noodle 2:24
7.The Owl 3:23
8.Swamp Noodle 2:58
9.Mustang Sally 3:15

10.Anasazi Noodle 3:20
11.Again 2:58
12.Starlight Noodle 4:39
13.Mad Man Blues 3:13
14.Fire Ant Noodle 3:43

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Silver Apples ‎– "Contact" (Kapp Records ‎– KS-3584) 1969

The Silver Apples' second album caused a bit of a hoo-haa,and is another fine example of what happens when capitalism becomes involved in music.
Our most favourite eclectic NYC-based 1960s minimalist electronic pop duo had struck a deal with the now thankfully defunct airline Pan Am to shoot the front photo of the album's artwork in an airliner cockpit, in exchange for including the Pan Am logo. However, the backside of the record featured a photograph of a plane crash. This led to a lawsuit and the record was pulled from the stores,effectively destroying their career. As if seeing our Silver Appled heroes pickin' banjoes in the wreckage of a plane crash would put anybody off flying with Pan-Am, or the chances of anyone but a few penniless hippies actually seeing this image,would send the airline's stocks tumbling was extremely unlikely.They sued because they could.If these big business idiots had any sense, they would have laughed it off, and added an American Airlines logo on the wreckage on the rear.This would have boosted Pan-Am's public image, and even helped American Airlines as there's no such thing as Bad publicity, sayeth the man, and The Silver Apples would have made the Billboard charts; thus making them suck,but at least they'd have finished the third album,and likely made a fourth. I asked Simeon why he didn't release the previously mythical third album (which eventually saw light in 1998-ish), and he said, "It was too commercial", so Pan-Am missed out there....probably why the fuckers went to the wall.A Pox on you and all your houses big business man.
The album itself, is a droning eardrum buzz groove of classic hippie electronica,and is certainly the superior work of their first career.Dare I say Groundbreaking?....like a falling aircraft?

Tracklist:

1.You And I 3:19
2.Water 4:19
3.Ruby 2:31
4.Gypsy Love 5:32
5.You're Not Foolin' Me 6:26
6.I Have Known Love 3:50
7.A Pox On You 5:08
8.Confusion 3:23
9.Fantasies 6:01

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Silver Apples ‎– "Silver Apples" (Kapp Records ‎– KS-3562) 1968

I figure that they got their name from Morton Subotnick's album, via the W.B.Yeats' poem,"Silver Apples Of the moon" released the previous year.
Siver Apples were the very first electronic rock duo and an obvious precursor to Suicide,who began their long career of sonic terrorism a year after Simeon and drummer Dan Taylor called it a day after getting sued by Pan-Am.
Simeon Coxe, the singer and electronicist, made his own proto-synth from a bunch of Oscillators and had a variety of levers,knobs and pedals to control the sound of the box of tricks which he named after himself...."The Simeon".
The persussion heavy repetitive sound reminds one of krautrockers CAN more than Suicide,but the influence on Vega and Rev is undeniable.
The original line-up got back together in the mid-nineties, of which I was much privileged to see perform in a pub in Leicester,uk, around 1998 (at the much missed Physio and Firkin), and got to chat with Simeon after saying that me and my buddy were from the Observer.He was much amused by the fact that I referred to himself as "The Simeon" like his machine was called,but I rather liked the ape-like connotations,as in Simian. Thats what happens when you invite drunken Observer reporters backstage when you don't drink yourself and you have a complimentary crate  of beer just waiting to be drank. I thought Simeon looked rather like an urbane Ozzy Osbourne,with his dyed black long hair and round tinted glasses,but he certainly wasn't as thick as Ozzy. I'm not sure if Windy and Carl,and some Spacemen Three offshoot were supporting that night, or was that the gig they did a year or so before,with the new band members,which wasn't so good.
Sadly Dan died a few years after, and Simeon broke his neck in a car accident. This duo were cursed.

Tracklist:

A1 Oscillations 2:47
A2 Seagreen Serenades 2:53
A3 Lovefingers 4:10
A4 Program 4:05
A5 Velvet Cave 3:28
B1 Whirly-Bird 2:39
B2 Dust 3:42
B3 Dancing Gods 5:55
B4 Misty Mountain 2:38

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Morton Subotnick ‎– "Silver Apples Of The Moon" (Nonesuch ‎– H-71174) 1967

Allegedly the first piece of Electronic Music commisioned by a record company. Which is probably correct,as in music made from a purely electronic source.The source being, in this case,The Buchla Modular Electronic Music System.There were plenty of 'electronic' records and recordings before this,especially those of the Musique Concréte variety; but with a synthesizer,Silver Apples is said to be there first.
There's not much in the way of structure here however, more in the line of Free Electronics,relying on funny electronic noises for it's avant-garde novelty value. If this is Avant-Garde then so was the soundtrack to the Forbidden Planet made a decade before this.
There was certainly a lysergic appeal that would have the casual Hippie space cadet freaking out at those groovy sounds man;and the cover art betrays nonesuch's target market with it's far-out oil film projector still.Psychedelic cover means Psychedelic music right?
Just tell 'em what to do and they'll invariably do it.

Tracklist:

A Silver Apples Of The Moon (Part One) 16:30
B Silver Apples Of The Moon (Part Two) 15:00

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