What if your favorite rock band abandoned their instruments and started performing with only, say, trumpets and a beat machine? What if your average psychedelic outfit dropped their guitars and reformed with live drums and a bunch of oscillators? It's interesting to consider how songs would thrive or fail in different settings, using different instruments, or in the hands of varying musicians. In 1967, The Overland Stage Electric Band were a full blown rock group, sporting three guitarist and a host of heavy, psychedelic tunes. During one of the bands obligatory extended guitar solos, lead singer Simeon happened to plug in an oscillator his friend had loaned him earlier that evening. The venue was introduced to electronic mayhem. Typically, the band hated it, and after questioning Simeon's intent, each guitarists quit one by one. With only drummer Danny Taylor left, Simeon gradually accrued more and more oscillators, hoping to fill out what remained of the outfits sound. Thus, the Overland Stage Electric Band became the Silver Apples. Stripped down to primitive drumming and bleeping oscillators, the tried and true late '60s psychedelia quickly mutated into something wholly different. Something much darker, more droning, and paranoid. By 1968, the Silver Apples had recorded their debut album, unleashing a short work of minimalist, electronic pyschedelia on the unsuspecting masses.
Almost 40 years later, the band's first two albums (culled together for a 1997 reissue) provide an essential view of early electronic music. The records drip with a late '60s sentiment; they're completely of their time, but a distinctly modern aesthetic lines each tunes border. Floating low in the mix are warbling oscillations, random pulses of pure electricity fading in and out of Simeon's paranoid verses. Danny Taylor is an equally integral part of the groups sound, providing a simultaneously inventive and steady rhythm that would heavily foreshadow the motorik drones of German rock in the years to come.
In typical fashion, the band's debut begins with their own trademark drone, sluggishly fluctuating until Taylor cuts in with a steady bass hit. Without hesitation, Simeon introduces his tonal mantra: "Oscillations, oscillations, electronic evocations!" he chants plainly. It doesn't get more upfront than that. Two minutes into the album, you know exactly where the Silver Apples are coming from. With their mission statement clear, the duo proceeds to lay down some of the most blissfully paranoid electronic grooves you're ever likely to hear.
For any '60s aficionado, the Silver Apples' eponymous debut and 1969's Contact should provide a quality fix of heady synthetics that, realistically, should be recognized by the indie community as well. After all, in 1968 the Silver Apples were the quintessential indie band, and aside from a few technological upgrades, not much has really changed since then.
Silver Apples:
1. Oscillations
2. Seagreen Serenades
3. Lovefingers
4. Program
5. Velvet Cave
6. Whirly-Bird
7. Dust
8. Dancing Gods
9. Misty Mountain
Contact:
1.You And I
2. Water
3. Ruby
4. Gypsy Love
5. You're Not Foolin' Me
6. I Have Known Love
7. A Pox On You
8. Confusion
9. Fantasies
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