Originally published at: Looking back at electronic music pioneers Silver Apples | Boing Boing
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I’m surprised that none of my super music nerd friends play the Silver Apples all the time. Maybe it’s the same reason they don’t play Dick Hyman all the time.
BTW that HP 200SR oscillator at 5:45 at the top left is an unusual unit that was part of a military test set. I use one for my home projects.
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Perhaps it could have been due to access? I remember my friend and I were really into the experimental electronic sounds, but obtaining records in Kansas in the late 70s was no easy feat. Luckily, his dad lived in Los Angeles, so every once in a while, he was able to bring back a haul from Tower Records.
I remember we scored some great early stuff like Kraftwerk’s Autobahn that way.
Some early USian adopters of the electronic sound…
ETA: I love that nod to the Beatles at the end.
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Looks like a sculptural homage to Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica at 9:22.
I recognize SA’s Misty Mountain from the one time I heard it on WNEW-FM, on Alison Steele’s (damn, I miss her) legendary progressive music show. That’s the impact MM had on me. Very hypnotizing, late-night music.
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Silver Apples? Good name for a band…
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Pretty much the source for some 60s/70s rock bands. (ex: Early prog-rock band The Nice — with Keith Emerson — had a song titled Diamond Hard Blue Apples of the Moon.) Proggie music/trippy lyrics.
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Golden Oranges just didn’t sound right.
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And before they could scoop it up, they lost their bid to Tangerine Dream. /s
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It’s a certainty that these lads took their name from the fictitious NYC club ‘featured’ in the film “Coogan’s Bluff” (by ugly turns an anti-hippy/flowerchild flick… based on one’s point of view).
This track tends to make the room quiet when it comes up on shuffle. Lot of emotion for a bunch of basic electronics.
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There has to be some cross pollination with Morton Subotnick’s early synth classic “Silver Apples of the Moon” right?
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I just stumbled on this video about this early electronic musician / composer that I don’t think I have heard before. She seems absolutely fascinating.
Delia Derbyshire - The Delian Mode
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they both take their name from the final lines of the yeats poem “the song of wandering aengus.” seems that it would be an unlikely coincidence that they would both have their origin in 1967, but simeon coxe claimed in an interview that he’d never heard of subotnick when naming the band.
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This is great, love some Silver Apples - ages ago found a beat up copy of Contact in a thrift store bin, picked it up on the basis of the crazy cover and hints of prog weirdness - biked home, put it on the decks and became a fan for life.
Simeon’s instrument and technique is fascinating in the history of electronic musical instrument development - his rig was entirely fashioned from surplus components, (much of which was in some way or another WWII debris that would have been available in NYC at the time). Purpose made synthesizers only really existed in large non-portable formats, the Minimoog appeared in 1970. The use of a bank of fixed oscillators (rather than VCO’s) allowed microtunings that would be less convenient with later standardized keyboard approach. At this time there was no way to play arbitrarily tuned electronically generated chords on stage (electronic organs did exist but they had no pitch and less timbre flexibility) - and wouldn’t be widespread until the 80’s introduction of digitally controlled polysynths.
The use of telegraph keys was absolutely brilliant - the mechanics of these being finely crafted for the speed and precise rhythmic manipulation that a skilled operator excelled at. In some ways it’s a better choice (albeit not velocity sensitive) than the mechanism of a standard piano/organ key (mechanically evolved to throw a hammer at a string or lift a valve).
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Simeon’s self titled instrument wasn’t exactlly small. It was like porting around a wall of RCA tabletop radios. Genius idea but really unweildy.
I love Danny Taylors drumming. I remember the first time I heard their debut album back in the 90s. Hypnotic.
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Pan Am killed Silver Apples?
So uncool. I’m glad they never made it to space.
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Probably her most well-known work…
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That jogged my memory back down the decades. (Not Silver Apples.)
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True, it’s all relative - nothing compared to certain other RCA instruments of the era. Looking closely at the Simeon in some of those pics it appears to properly flightcased for transport - well within the envelope later set (and demolished) by Emerson et al.
Agreed. The quote in the interview about shifting from thinking in terms of rhythms to patterns was a cool insight.
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I should have said “heard” of her by name. That was messed up how the BBC treated their composers. According to the doc I linked the composers couldn’t be credited for their work due to BBC policy. And that when they finally dropped that policy it wasn’t retroactive. So she never got a single royalty for creating one of the most recognizable theme songs ever made.
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