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m toxeJscareer is only th; tatest m a 4

$& sounded J m aka A m Baraka, used to gather. One night he was introd hi$ a stark, yet *ward Clayton and his Wife, who promptly dragged him to a bar .fa? b&ad atryEhlryt that 3rd where Sun Ra And H6 Arkeslra were playing Stmeon reme of pr0ducing Ea, the t ime was mng ptenfy of electronics the night he raw him. The budding paTnterlmus~clan mevitaMy led to grwpS was i m n t l y ~mprfssedby the power of The Arkem's performance, even thoughhe meddlfnW a T Un

Fifty Foot Hose and L O W wasn't entirely enamoured of Ra's soc~algraces,

' s i m a v e surfing rock "Their amplete abandonment of ex1st8-g boundaries had the effect of freeing me dared abandon all other ftom mine," recalls Simeon now "But I remember once SiMng at h ~ sta b l bmr i 4

instrumentatimto reach out nd capture e wund of h r r o w ,

think~ngthat he was someth~ngof a social phoney He $at on a mu* c a s L y ,

i i

, The trouble with ah ad of your t l e is the d&ades it takes for the world to something so he could be higher up than everybody else. I t was Bke havingm cafch up. Silver Apples s lit amrd leg I wrangles after only two albums. The audience with a member of some kind of Spaced-out pseudo-royab. He WO@ .,4 experience m so traumati that their nder, Slveon Coxe, self-same inventor d Issue pronouncements without regard for the conversation W n g place It seemed f their extraordinary ur-electronic instrument, the Simeon, retired from music like an act to me." altogether and went back to painting. But with the 2 lst century looming ever closer, After Ra, Clayton introduced Simeon to electronic composer Hal Rodgers. It was a the time is now for Silver Apples. Today, their self-titled first album and its follow-up productive encounter. First, Rodgers composed a piece insp~redby one of Simeon's Contact are accepted as classic examples of early oscillator driven rock The extent of paintings. Then Rodgers showed him the oscillator he had hooked up to ha stereo their reach is evidenced by a recent Silver Apples tribute system. It was the first time the young artist had seen an album, Electronic Evocations, featuring 90s versions of the electronic instrument close up. He was so fascinated by the group's songs by such UK and US post-rock and electronic dien sounds it produced that he spent hours goofing around, units as Windy & Carl, Third Eye Foundationand Flowchart. coaxing them from the machine.

The protagonist of this sudden new surge of interest is

Dominic Martin, whose Enraptured label gathered together the various groups' contributions for the tribute album. "I'd been a

"When he invited me to come up to hear his new oscillator

I thought he meant oscilloscope," remembers Coxe. "I just thought it would be cool to listen to music and watch the

Silver Apples fan for quite a while," says Martin. "I bought the original LPs on the recommendation of various people and they just blew me away. I later had the idea of putting out a display on the tube. Instead he was messing with this crazy thing and I was ~nstantlyfascinated. He laboured ntently and in frustration to get his intonation right,

tribute record and, although I'm not a big tributes fan, it really started to take shape qulte quickly. Dave Pearce from Flying aut what I loved was that you could just swen-

around and create energles and textures. I W;

Saucer Attack put me on t o Matt [Elliot] of Third Eye hooked."

Foundation.Then bands I'd approached for future singles, like

Flowchartand Windy & Carl, all suddenly became keen."

The first pressing of Electronic Evocations, originally a 10 "

Once Simeon had acquired the instrument f rom Rodgers, i t became known as the

'grandfather oscillator', and would be the mini LP, quickly sold out. The enthusiastic response prompted a full length CD version, this time featuring nlne groups. Even more positively, its reception drew Silver

Apples' founder Simeon Coxe out of retirement foundation of the future Silver Apples sound.

Electronic composition mlght have f~red

Simeon's rmagination (he was aware of the electronic experiments of both Cage and Stockhausen), but

"It was at this stage that Simeon got in touch," continues Martin. "He'd stumbled his loyalties were still rock based. across the 1 0 " in a New York record shop and loved it. I think more than anything, he "I have never been particularly attracted to electronic music was taken by the sincerity of the various bands' verslons of his songs. It probably came in its pure or serious form," explains Simeon. "My background over to him like a breath of fresh air. From there things developed, to the point where in music is mostly rock. When I became interested in he wanted to record again. Luckily for us he remembered Enraptured and so we were electronics it was from the standpoint of its application to a able to put out the "Fractal Flow" 7" together." Indeed; things have been going so well rock expression. I have always thought of Silver Apples as being a that Coxe has put together a new Silver Apples trio for live and recording dates. kick-ass rock band. We just don't play guitars."