Oscillations

Way back in the mists of time, I discovered a copy of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia in my High School's library. This was just the book to start a budding young rock snob on his way. I'm working from memory here (I would kill for a copy, if anyone on the interwebs has a spare copy...yeah right), but the book featured a nice mix of the well-known and the obscure. And one of the obscure entries was a duo called the Silver Apples who from the description sounded too cool.

What made them so unusual? The lineup for starters, Danny Taylor on drums and occasional vocals and Simeon on the simeon, vocals, banjo and recorder. What the hell's a "simeon" I wondered? Turns out it was a home-made primitive synthesizer cobbled together from oscillators and a telegraph keyboard and other odds and ends. Its inclusion as the main instrument gave the band a very unusual sound: a kind of pulsating rhythmic hum that predates even Neu! as the first motorik band. Sometimes with experimental bands, the experimenting is done at the expense of the tunes, but this is not the case with the 'Apples two albums: Silver Apples [Kapp Records 1968] and Contact [Kapp Records 1969]. Oscillations, Seagreen Serenades, Ruby and the bitter A Pox on You can stand on the strengths of the melodies alone. What I mean to say is, if the songs were played on the standard rock band instrumentation, they would still be good songs. A spin of Electronic Evocations - A Tribute to the Silver Apples [Enraptured. RAPTCS02] proves it.

So what do you need to own? The two sixties albums are obligatory purchases. A third album was in the works at the time the band broke up and was subsequently issued as The Garden . This cd features seven songs recorded in 1968. The set is rounded out by a series of "noodles" which feaure Taylor's original unaccompanied drum tracks with Simeon adding synthesizer flourishes. The "noodles" are OK, but do not sound right as he using a contemporary commercially made synthesizer and not the original instrument that disappeared onto a scrap heap decades ago.

The Silver Apples name is still in use and Simeon continues to make quality music, but it is the sixties recordings that matter the most to me.