Summary.
Legendary cult-band Silver Apples were an experimental duo of electronic
keyboards and vocals that predated
new wave and synth-pop by almost a decade.
The music on Silver Apples (1968) and Contact (1969)
wed psychedelia and rock'n'roll while packing urban neurosis and existential
angst.
(translated from
my original Italian text
by Tobia D'Onofrio)
In 1967 Simeon Coxe (electronic
instruments) and Dan Taylor (percussions) formed the Silver Apples in New York. They recorded two albums of psichedelic textures incorporating early electronic
experiments (thanks to a very primitive synthetizer).
At the time, the music of Silver Apples (Kapp,
1968) and Contact (Kapp, 1969) was avant-garde.
After this experience, the band disappeared
for twenty-five years, because of legal problems.
(Original text by Piero Scaruffi)
Simeon Coxes’ long awaited comeback (he’s
the only creative mind behind Silver Apples, now) has been announced beforehand
by the single Fractal Flow/ Lovefingers (Enraptured, 1996); finally, it
has become a reality: the album Beacon (Whirlybird, 1997) contains
eleven brief tracks; eight of them are unreleased and three are taken from the
previous Silver Apples’ albums. Xian Hawkins is playing with Coxe, now.
Sometimes, if a cult-icon gets back in the
spotlight, the results can be very dangerous. People tend to reconsider an
artist, looking at his work from a new perspective. This same “rule” applies to
the first tracks on the new Silver Apples’ album: they are trivial “songs”,
built around silly melodies and played in such a predictable way to result a
little embarassing.
The arrangements are vaguely reminiscent of
new wave and dark punk, as they were two decades earlier. Besides
the fact that analog keyboards are very common nowadays, this very year they
were played by innumerable bands, in a much more creative way. But the real
problem is Simeon Coxe, a monotonous singer who keeps being verbose, therefore
self-destructive.
After Danny Taylor’s departure, Simeon
relies on Michael Lerner, a skillful drummer playing with a “contemporary”
technique. Xian Hawkins co-operates with Simeon on keyboards. In a word, if
something doesn’t sound good, Taylor is not to be blamed. Overall, very few
moments do work, on this album: The Dance is a pale attempt to pack a
dancefloor; Together boasts a trivial robotic rhythm; Daisy is an
example of very naif (almost childish) experimental music. There could be
something worthy of a mention, but the way Simeon uses his voice is really
embarassing: a novice kid would probably sing better than him. Things get
better when Coxe imitates the Doors. He is a funny, indirect imitator, but in
the end, to much of my surprise, it’s the best singing I’ve ever heard from him.
Lovelights is inspired by the Doors’ Five To One, while the
merry-go-round of Hocus Pocus clearly draws inspiration from Ray
Manzarek’s organ. It is no accident that the only number that measures up to
Coxe’s musical surrealism is Cosmic String, an instrumental track.
The brand new versions of Misty Mountain, from the first album, I Have Known Love and You And I,
from Contact, have lost the appeal of innocence that characterized the
originals.
It’s actually a matter of taste, but Steve
Albini’s noisy production may either have damaged the album (giving the sound a
post-punk edge), or it may as well have improved the final result (making the
songs more powerful and lively). Certainly, Simeon’s monotonous litanies and
his naif keyboard gurgling would send an epileptic to sleep, without the mighty
rhythm syncopations. At the end of the day, I think Albini has damaged the Silver
Apples, because his production is “too slick, too perfect”: the previous albums
were amateur productions, but nobody ever thought of “polishing” the singing or
the electronics. Basically, now that the project has become professional, all
of its limitations are showing up.
Decatur
(Whirlybird, 1998), the second “comeback album” by Simeon Coxe, features only
one avant-garde composition: a long suite (more than forty minutes) for
oscillator (Coxe), electronic keyboards (Xian Hawkins) and percussions (Michael
Lerner). Denigrators will certainly say that thirty years ago Morton Subotnick
used to play this kind of music, maybe even better than Coxe. Undoubtedly this
should be filed under “Dadaistic music”, that is music based upon strange
sounds and a wild improvisation. Coxe doesn’t mean to defile classical music,
though; he just means to write classical music for oscillators. The total lack
of melody and theme does not affect the unity of the composition. But the lack
of any fashionable music will affect the album’s reception and the sales. Coxe
is miles away from the fashionable music of 1998, such as ambient music, techno
and new age. He plays “free sounds” according to the aesthetic of the Sixties.
Furthermore, oscillators produce cranky sounds, hardly suitable for the masses
of the new Millennium.
The Garden
(Whirlybird, 1998) collects unreleased tapes from 1968-69.
Danny Taylor died in 2005 of a heart attack at the age of 56.
The Silver Apples returned with Clinging To A Dream (Chickencoop, 2016), de facto a solo album by Simeon Coxe.
Simeon Coxe died in 2020 at the age of 82.
