Silver Apples
| Silver Apples | |
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Simeon performing as Silver Apples at Headrow House, Leeds in August 2016
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| Background information | |
| Origin | New York City, United States |
| Genres | Psychedelic rock, electronic, experimental rock |
| Years active | 1967–1970, 1996–1999, 2006–present |
| Labels | Kapp, MCA, Enraptured Records, Rocket Girl |
| Associated acts | Sybarite |
| Website | www |
| Members | Simeon |
| Past members | Danny Taylor Xian Hawkins Michael Lerner |
Silver Apples is an American psychedelic electronic music group from New York, composed of Simeon (born Simeon Oliver Coxe III, 4 June 1938, in Knoxville, Tennessee), who performs on a primitive synthesizer of his own devising (also named The Simeon); and, until his death in 2005, drummer Danny Taylor. The group was active between 1967 and 1969, before reforming in the mid-1990s.
They were one of the first groups to employ electronic music techniques extensively within a rock idiom, and their minimalistic style, with its pulsing, driving beat and frequently discordant modality, anticipated not only the experimental electronic music and krautrock of the 1970s but also underground dance music and indie rock of the 1990s.
The group formed out of a traditional rock band called The Overland Stage Electric Band, working regularly in the East Village. Simeon was the singer, but began to incorporate a 1940s vintage audio oscillator into the show, which alienated the other band members to the extent that the group was eventually reduced to the duo of Simeon and Taylor, at which point they renamed themselves The Silver Apples, after the William Butler Yeats poem The Song of the Wandering Aengus. The arsenal of oscillators eventually grew (according to their first LP liner notes) 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.
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