The Psych Ward: Silver Apples
The Psych Ward: Silver Apples
As a kid, I made sustained and regular use of my parents’ record collection – unknowingly becoming fascinated with the otherworldly sounds made by early synthesizers. I heard them demonstrated by The Beatles on Abbey Road and most significantly on Everything You Always Wanted to Hear on the Moog (But Were Afraid to Ask For) and Walter (now Wendy) Carlos’ work on A Clockwork Orange OST Original soundtrack. Where the latter two delivered well-known classical works on modular synthesizers, The Beatles – and, more accurately, George Harrison – added a very early Moog to four tracks on Abbey Road. All three examples showed incredible virtuosity with a very new instrument.
The debut album by Silver Apples – eponymously entitled Silver Apples – is a different sort of implementation using an early synthesizer. I wasn’t made aware of the band’s existence until I was in college and even then, it wasn’t really on my radar (see above references) and chose to write this review with no prior research or background on the band. Caveat emptor.
Opening with an oscillating and rising waveform, “Oscillations” starts the album off with a bang. Built around a drum part that is almost a vamp, the song features repetitive lyric patterns that stay in a very narrow range of notes – all the while with a frantic synthesizer part bearing down.
Grating and sometimes uncomfortable synthesizer loops and comically simple drum parts form the basis of most of the nine songs on Silver Apples. “Program” and “Dust” break out of that pattern somewhat. “Program” starts with a series of found sounds: recordings of a Bavarian oompah band, tuned radio (or television) programs, and a throbbing bassline. The vocals remain in a narrow band of notes but include recognizable harmonies under an onslaught of sounds that would undoubtedly make future sound collage builders The Orb very happy. “Dust” brings to mind Jim Morrison reciting poetry – over a(nother) throbbing synthesizer bass line. Switching from left to right and back in the stereo image, the vocals evolve into singing – almost – over repeated cymbal crashes and swells drenched in reverb.
While Silver Apples is unquestionably a landmark recording in psychedelic music, it clocks in at just over thirty-two minutes for nine tracks. Spare and otherwise dissonant on most tracks, the sweetest part of the fruit lands with the final song, “Misty Mountain.” Perhaps it is the vocals expanding beyond a five-note range or possibly the counterpoint synthesizer parts. Regardless of how you hear it, Silver Apples brings to mind Stereolab, whose first album wouldn’t drop until nearly twenty-five years later.
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