CONTACT

Most people claim Silver Apples' 1968 debut album to be their finest hour, but I disagree. While their debut album is an absolute pinnacle of electronic music and one of the most groundbreaking albums ever created, I personally feel "Contact" is the better album. Simeon at this point had mastered playing his homemade synthesizer, with the oscillators themselves having a more distorted sound to them - he had also added on to his instrument at this point, with a total of 13 oscillators at his disposal (he only had 9 to play with when the first album was recorded). Songs like "You and I" and "You're Not Foolin' Me" have a wonderful discordant sound to them and a great driving beat to go along with it, "Water" deeply explores atonal droning that is more widely experimented with today in electronic music, "Ruby" adds an intriguing bluegrass element to the mix (with Simeon picking the banjo while playing bass notes on his oscillators with his feet!), and tracks like "Gypsy Love" and "A Pox On You" foreshadow the (dare I say it) disco-esque sounds Giorgio Moroder would create in the following decade. Alas, poorly-planned album artwork (with the back of the sleeve showing them playing banjos amongst airplane wreckage) spelled a quick end to Kapp Records and the Silver Apples themselves, sending them to the dustbins of obscurity for many years until the rediscovery of their music and subsequent revival in the '90s. Sadly, the Silver Apples are no longer with us - Danny Taylor died in 2006, and Simeon Coxe died in 2020 - but their cosmic sounds will forever live on!