Silver Apples is an American psychedelic electronic music group from New York. 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. Silver Apples is today composed of Simeon Coxe, who performs on an authentic synthesizer of his own devising (also named The Simeon). We asked Simeon Coxe some questions about his first moments in Katowice, about how many places he visited during his career, about his childhood and artistic beginings, about his influences and inspiration, about situation of creation in the begining of career and now and about experimenting in music.
Silver Apples is an American psychedelic electronic music group from New York. 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. Silver Apples is today composed of Simeon Coxe, who performs on an authentic synthesizer of his own devising (also named The Simeon). We asked Simeon Coxe some questions about his first moments in Katowice, about how many places he visited during his career, about his childhood and artistic beginings, about his influences and inspiration, about situation of creation in the begining of career and now and about experimenting in music.
I have been to Czechoslovakia.. Czech republic.. to Austria.. to Russia.. i have been over here.. oh god yeah.. many times.. I couldn’t count how many times..
This would be my second trip to Poland. I was up in north. In Gdansk during the winter. Quite a different scene than this..
This is my first time in Katowice. Yes. So far I love it.. I have only been here about ten minutes..
I just walked into the door.. yeah so i really have not got the chance to experience it yet but so far I love the energy.. Yeah and what i have seen when I drived in, the people in park, swimming in the water.. and all that.. great fun.
No I came from Alabama down near New Orleans on the golf coast.. real southern.. hot.. just like this.. hotter than this actually..
In Alabama?! Nothing. There is nothing..well.. There is like old southern rock n roll stuff like Lynnard Skynnard.. you know.. those bands.. but nothing from what i do i have to go to Houston.. or to Atlanta.. or New York.. or San Francisco.. To play my stuff.
I grew up in New Orleans.. as a child.. I was a New Orleans kid
I moved to New York.. and there is where silver apples were.. that was years and years and then i made my way back down to New Orleans.. after hurricane Frederic I guess it was.. because my parents needed to help with the damage on the house and stuff so I kind of stayed in the gulf area ever since and Alabama and New Orleans are very close together.. so.. when hurricane Katrina drowe me out of New Orleans i was in Alabama to stay with friends and I just never went back.. I just stayed in Alabama
When I was a child, the popular music at the time and where I used to go watch music being played was in the bars in black sections in town.. rampart street.. and people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry.. those people, they all played just in bars.. you just go into a bar and stand there and watch fats domino doing two hours set and drink a Coca Cola.. so I did that as a kid.. as a teenager.. that was my inspiration.. and when later I was in New York performing silver apples, it was all music that i was trying to do as an original music, but I am sure that I was influenced by what I have heard in New Orleans from those artists who were working in those bars there.. so somehow it is a combination of the two.
I totally love what is going with the house sound out of Chicago.. or the techno sound out of Detroit.. and how it is spread to the east coast.. to the west coast.
I love that music.. and I have played with those guys in festivals all over the world.. and they all tell me that I am an influence.. and i am just amassed.. astounded.. and thrilled.. and honoured that they would consider me to be a part of their movement.. I love that music.. I think that house music out of Chicago.. techno out of Detroit.. and even when the two are combined into a sort of a dance kind of experience.. yeah.. the energy is just wonderful.. I love it I mean I like regular rock and roll.. guitar rock and roll.. it is ok.. but it do not really get my juices flowing like electronic dance music of today does.. I really love it I am proud to be a small part of it.
Yeah.. 1970 or so.. I stopped.
..Fifteen years ago.. about mid 90s
I may just say that in the beginnings of silver apples when i was in my 20s mostly the audiences did not get what we were doing.. they tough that we were just freaky.. out of space monsters.. of some sort.. they only think that they could understand was what Danny Taylor was doing on the drums.. he was a marvellous drummer.. today.. when I go out on stage and what I do.. It is considered as an old fashion.. people accept it.. they understand it.. they understand the historical significance.. and I do not have that sort like „what the hell is that“ attitude.. When I play, people understand it.. and enjoy it.. and dance to it.. and are not in any way offended by it the way they were back in the early days.. and so to me it is much happier situation.. I love the work out of the stage.. and everybody go „yeah“ instead of like „What is he gonna do?“.. „Where are the guitars?“.. „What, is this all I am gonna hear? A bunch of electronics?“
Oh yeah.. absolutely.. now I have a report with the audience.. I have a communication back and forth.. people sing my songs along with me.. or call out names of song they wanna hear.. back in the day.. early days..
Well.. I guess.. time heals all wounds.. as they say (laugh) but now, what i am doing is so much like.. the basis of what other people are taking.. a whole another league forward.. into another direction.. that I think that they understand the relationship between what I do and the dance music that they are embracing now..
Yeah.. I have a few songs in my set from the new record which came out last year.. that are very strange in the way the rhythm part works with the melody.. and I can see the audience not able to get it right away.. they watch.. they see.. but the flow is not just what you would expect.. and so.. I am able to see that I am still on an edge of some sort. It is not like totally accepted.. completely..
