Oscillate with Silver Apples in Echoes Podcast

Hear the story of the first Electro-pop group, Silver Apples in Echoes Podcast

Silver Apples’ Simeon @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

Often when we produce interview features on Echoes, a lot of great material gets left on the floor due time constraints or because they are extraneous to the central story.  That’s the case with our interview with Simeon Coxe of Silver Apples.  You can hear all about this pioneering electronic pop group on Echoes, but in brief,  Silver Apples formed in 1967 and released their eponymous debut in 1968.  They had no synthesizers or electronic keyboards, just Danny Taylor on drums and Simeon on audio oscillators controlled by telegraph switches, buttons and knobs.  They were right in the center of the psychedelic 60s, opening for many of the major acts at the time and jamming with Jimi Hendrix.   Many of Simeon’s stories were too long to make the feature or didn’t fit the narrative.   But I want to share them with you here.  You can hear the tale of Silver Apples in the Echoes Podcast

Their iconic album cover was actually designed by the band:

Simeon Coxe: Yeah, we cut out a silhouette of two apples, me and Danny, and a leaf, just figured, I don’t know, apples have leaves.  And made a stencil out of it and sprayed our entire hallways with it with black ink and a toothbrush.  And the record label came in and photographed that and chose one of them for the record.

Simeon says that the band broke up after they were sued by Pan American Airlines over the cover of their second album, Contact:

Simeon Coxe:  Our second record was called Contact.  I named it Contact just because of the double entendre in the word.  And the fact that old timey airplane pilots used to have someone actually crank their propellers to start the airplanes and they would yell contact, which is to make electric contact.  And we thought this electric contact and the spinning of the propeller and all that was fine.  So we wanted to do it in an airplane cockpit, and the advertising agency that had Kapp Records also had Pan Am, so it was easy for them to get them to park an airplane facing the sunset, and have us sit in the pilot’s seat while they vacuumed out the rest of the airplane and shoot that shot.  So naturally, Danny and I smuggled in some pills and pot, you know, joints to hang out on the dashboard, stuff like that.  And then to take it even further, we found a cover of an airplane crash on the back that we used on the back and super imposed me and Danny just sitting among the wreckage there, just you know, dumb hippies.

And…everybody approved it.  I mean you don’t put an album out internationally and not have it go through all the steps of being approved.  And it was approved by Pan Am, approved by the record label, approved by the advertising agency.  And by the time it got on the shelves, some executive at Pan Am who hadn’t signed on an approval but who had had power, just freaked out and just you know, hit the fan.  They, Pan Am sued us personally, sued the record label, got an injunction from a judge to have all the records pulled off of the shelves nationally.  Got us forbidden to play the music that’s on that record, so we couldn’t promote it.  And as a matter of fact, they went so far as to in the city of New York, get the judge to allow them to confiscate our equipment to make sure we weren’t gonna play that music.  So one time when we were playing at Max’s Kansas City, fire marshals came in and taped the stage so that our stuff would be there when their equipment guy got there, and we managed when they weren’t looking, we managed to sneak my oscillators and stuff out the back door, but by the time we got back, they got Danny’s drums.  So we were out of business.  No record, no record label and no equipment.

They didn’t collect from me.  Danny and I went into hiding.  We both got hotel rooms and just kinda went into hiding.  I worked as a DJ in a nightclub for a while and I think Danny did some session work in recording studios under a different name, and we just kinda laid low.  Then eventually we just said, you know, Silver Apples is never coming back, it’s just not going to be possible, we better just go our own ways for a while and see what happens.

So Pan Am, I guess you could say they successfully shut us down, but actually Silver Apples is still in business.  I don’t think you’ll find a PanAm airplane anyway, so we survived, from my point of view.

Simeon says that Silver Apples jammed with Jimi Hendrix and actually recorded a version of “The Star Spangled Banner” with him.

Simeon Playing in the 1960s

Simeon Coxe: Yeah, well he and Danny were friends.  Danny played drums in his first band.  His first band was something called Jimi James and the Blue Flames.  And they worked as a house band all through the village, just a straight blues band.  And the drummer was apparently very unreliable; he’d get drunk and get lost or something.  He wouldn’t show up for days, sometimes weeks.  One time he went to detox and just stayed there for months.  And Jimi would call Danny and Danny would come drum with him.  And so when Hendrix got the opportunity to go to England and try and make something bigger for himself because he didn’t feel like it was happening in the states, but a bunch of the British musicians were saying we could make it happen, he begged Danny to come with him.  He didn’t wanna go by himself and just be there with, you know, have to pick up musicians.  He ended up with a pretty good group, but fortunately, Danny didn’t wanna go to Britain.  He just didn’t want to go and he said you know, there’s plenty of musicians around here I can work with.  And so I got him.

Silver Apples Oscillatiors Today

And so whenever Hendrix would come back into town, he’d look Danny up and see what he was doing, and so he came around the record plant.  We both were booked in the record plant simultaneously one time for months for doing our third records.  And so he’d come in and jam and we’d find, we’d find out what he was doing in his studio and jam. A lot of times we were using the same studio, his amps would be parked all around my amps.  And so we’d just, you know, when the time came, I’d leave and he’d come in, or many times it would overlap.  He would come in and sit around and drink a beer while Danny and I were working on stuff.   One time Danny and I were working on our version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” which we were gonna do at a festival in, on the 4th of July in the park in NY.  We were gonna play “The Star Spangled Banner” with my oscillators.  We thought that would be a howl; if the CIA didn’t put us in jail, it would be great.  And Hendrix came in and he heard us playing it.  And he said damn, I’m working on the same thing…I’m supposed to play an outdoor concert in a couple of months and I’m supposed to play at dawn, and I thought it would be funny to play the national anthem to make those kids all stand up and wake up, you know, before, at the crack of dawn.  [He was actually scheduled to play at night and close the festival, but rain delays pushed him into the morning.]

Simeon Coxe

And so we got to talking about it and he was listening to how we were doing it, and he was playing along with how he  was doing it.  And Ed Kramer, who’s the engineer, had the good sense to roll the tapes.  And so we do have that.  We the version that was given to Danny, a two track mix down that was given to Danny to take home to see how he could add drums to it…all kinds of cymbal crashes for the war sounds and stuff.  And it just never happened, but we did find the tape of me on bass oscillators and Hendrix on guitar playing “The Star Spangled Banner. ” We found it in Danny’s attic when Danny and I hooked up again in the ‘90s.  And so that’s been since released on a disk called Selections, which is like a best of.  It has about 12 cuts from the first two albums and then as a bonus track, as a hidden track it’s the Hendrix session.

This video is ostensibly that recording, however, to my ears it sounds like the studio version from Hendrix’s Rainbow Bridge.

Finally, Simeon claims he never called his instrument The Simeon.

Simeon Coxe: Well, The Simeon, but I would never have done that.  That’s embarrassing to me to this day.  That was one of those record label things to try and promote something that really didn’t exist.  There was nothing that was The Simeon.  It changed every day.  Something broke and had to be replaced every day, or Danny or I would have a new idea, something that we added or subtracted to it.  It never was the same.  There was no way it could ever be manufactured or marketed in any way, but they had to do that as I was just kinda stuck with it.

I told him he should own it.

This is the stuff that was left out.  Hear what was left in with Silver Apples in the Echoes Podcast.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Erik Wøllo’s Timelines is our February CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

Pick Up  TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Silver Apples Plucked Tonight on Echoes

Hear the story of Silver Apples tonight on Echoes

Simeon Playing in the 1960s

Often when we produce interview features on Echoes, a lot of great material gets left on the floor due time constraints or because they are extraneous to the central story.  That’s the case with our interview with Simeon Coxe of Silver Apples.  You can hear all about this pioneering electronic pop group on Echoes, but in brief,  Silver Apples formed in 1967 and released their eponymous debut in 1968.  They had no synthesizers or electronic keyboards, just Danny Taylor on drums and Simeon on audio oscillators controlled by telegraph switches, buttons and knobs.  They were right in the center of the psychedelic 60s, opening for many of the major acts at the time and jamming with Jimi Hendrix.   Many of Simeon’s stories were too long to make the feature or didn’t fit the narrative.   But I want to share them with you here.  You can hear the tale of Silver Apples tonight on Echoes.

Their iconic album cover was actually designed by the band:

Simeon Coxe: Yeah, we cut out a silhouette of two apples, me and Danny, and a leaf, just figured, I don’t know, apples have leaves.  And made a stencil out of it and sprayed our entire hallways with it with black ink and a toothbrush.  And the record label came in and photographed that and chose one of them for the record.

Simeon says that the band broke up after they were sued by Pan American Airlines over the cover of their second album, Contact:

Simeon Coxe:  Our second record was called Contact.  I named it Contact just because of the double entendre in the word.  And the fact that old timey airplane pilots used to have someone actually crank their propellers to start the airplanes and they would yell contact, which is to make electric contact.  And we thought this electric contact and the spinning of the propeller and all that was fine.  So we wanted to do it in an airplane cockpit, and the advertising agency that had Kapp Records also had Pan Am, so it was easy for them to get them to park an airplane facing the sunset, and have us sit in the pilot’s seat while they vacuumed out the rest of the airplane and shoot that shot.  So naturally, Danny and I smuggled in some pills and pot, you know, joints to hang out on the dashboard, stuff like that.  And then to take it even further, we found a cover of an airplane crash on the back that we used on the back and super imposed me and Danny just sitting among the wreckage there, just you know, dumb hippies.

And…everybody approved it.  I mean you don’t put an album out internationally and not have it go through all the steps of being approved.  And it was approved by Pan Am, approved by the record label, approved by the advertising agency.  And by the time it got on the shelves, some executive at Pan Am who hadn’t signed on an approval but who had had power, just freaked out and just you know, hit the fan.  They, Pan Am sued us personally, sued the record label, got an injunction from a judge to have all the records pulled off of the shelves nationally.  Got us forbidden to play the music that’s on that record, so we couldn’t promote it.  And as a matter of fact, they went so far as to in the city of New York, get the judge to allow them to confiscate our equipment to make sure we weren’t gonna play that music.  So one time when we were playing at Max’s Kansas City, fire marshals came in and taped the stage so that our stuff would be there when their equipment guy got there, and we managed when they weren’t looking, we managed to sneak my oscillators and stuff out the back door, but by the time we got back, they got Danny’s drums.  So we were out of business.  No record, no record label and no equipment.

They didn’t collect from me.  Danny and I went into hiding.  We both got hotel rooms and just kinda went into hiding.  I worked as a DJ in a nightclub for a while and I think Danny did some session work in recording studios under a different name, and we just kinda laid low.  Then eventually we just said, you know, Silver Apples is never coming back, it’s just not going to be possible, we better just go our own ways for a while and see what happens.

So Pan Am, I guess you could say they successfully shut us down, but actually Silver Apples is still in business.  I don’t think you’ll find a PanAm airplane anyway, so we survived, from my point of view.

Simeon says that Silver Apples jammed with Jimi Hendrix and actually recorded a version of “The Star Spangled Banner” with him.

Silver Apples’ Simeon @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

Simeon Coxe: Yeah, well he and Danny were friends.  Danny played drums in his first band.  His first band was something called Jimi James and the Blue Flames.  And they worked as a house band all through the village, just a straight blues band.  And the drummer was apparently very unreliable; he’d get drunk and get lost or something.  He wouldn’t show up for days, sometimes weeks.  One time he went to detox and just stayed there for months.  And Jimi would call Danny and Danny would come drum with him.  And so when Hendrix got the opportunity to go to England and try and make something bigger for himself because he didn’t feel like it was happening in the states, but a bunch of the British musicians were saying we could make it happen, he begged Danny to come with him.  He didn’t wanna go by himself and just be there with, you know, have to pick up musicians.  He ended up with a pretty good group, but fortunately, Danny didn’t wanna go to Britain.  He just didn’t want to go and he said you know, there’s plenty of musicians around here I can work with.  And so I got him.

Silver Apples Oscillatiors Today

And so whenever Hendrix would come back into town, he’d look Danny up and see what he was doing, and so he came around the record plant.  We both were booked in the record plant simultaneously one time for months for doing our third records.  And so he’d come in and jam and we’d find, we’d find out what he was doing in his studio and jam. A lot of times we were using the same studio, his amps would be parked all around my amps.  And so we’d just, you know, when the time came, I’d leave and he’d come in, or many times it would overlap.  He would come in and sit around and drink a beer while Danny and I were working on stuff.   One time Danny and I were working on our version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” which we were gonna do at a festival in, on the 4th of July in the park in NY.  We were gonna play “The Star Spangled Banner” with my oscillators.  We thought that would be a howl; if the CIA didn’t put us in jail, it would be great.  And Hendrix came in and he heard us playing it.  And he said damn, I’m working on the same thing…I’m supposed to play an outdoor concert in a couple of months and I’m supposed to play at dawn, and I thought it would be funny to play the national anthem to make those kids all stand up and wake up, you know, before, at the crack of dawn.  [He was actually scheduled to play at night and close the festival, but rain delays pushed him into the morning.]

Simeon Coxe

And so we got to talking about it and he was listening to how we were doing it, and he was playing along with how he  was doing it.  And Ed Kramer, who’s the engineer, had the good sense to roll the tapes.  And so we do have that.  We the version that was given to Danny, a two track mix down that was given to Danny to take home to see how he could add drums to it…all kinds of cymbal crashes for the war sounds and stuff.  And it just never happened, but we did find the tape of me on bass oscillators and Hendrix on guitar playing “The Star Spangled Banner. ” We found it in Danny’s attic when Danny and I hooked up again in the ‘90s.  And so that’s been since released on a disk called Selections, which is like a best of.  It has about 12 cuts from the first two albums and then as a bonus track, as a hidden track it’s the Hendrix session.

This video is ostensibly that recording, however, to my ears it sounds like the studio version from Hendrix’s Rainbow Bridge.

Finally, Simeon claims he never called his instrument The Simeon.

Simeon Coxe: Well, The Simeon, but I would never have done that.  That’s embarrassing to me to this day.  That was one of those record label things to try and promote something that really didn’t exist.  There was nothing that was The Simeon.  It changed every day.  Something broke and had to be replaced every day, or Danny or I would have a new idea, something that we added or subtracted to it.  It never was the same.  There was no way it could ever be manufactured or marketed in any way, but they had to do that as I was just kinda stuck with it.

I told him he should own it.

This is the stuff that was left out.  Hear what was left in with Silver Apples tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

Join the Echoes CD of the Month Club.  Erik Wøllo’s Timelines is our February CD of the Month.  You’ll get great CDs and help support Echoes at the same time.   You can do it all right here.

OR

Pick Up  TRANSMISSIONS:
THE ECHOES LIVING ROOM CONCERTS VOLUME 19

Join us on Facebook where you’ll get all the Echoes news so you won’t be left behind when Dead Can Dance appear on the show, Tangerine Dream tours or Brian Eno drops a new iPad album. Or Follow us on Twitter@echoesradio.

Now you can go Mobile with Echoes On-Line. Find out how you can listen to Echoes 24/7 wherever you are on your iPhone, iPad or Droid.

Electronic Bliss at Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit.

Three nights of electronic music blazed forth the weekend of October 25-27 at the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit in Asheville, North Carolina.  Scattered across Asheville’s compact downtown in five different venues ranging from a bar to an arena, musicians plugged in with a range of electronic dreams.  One musician was 77 years old with sounds that date back to 1968 while others dialed up computerized grooves from the future.  And a few of them weren’t really electronic at all.

MOEMS Halloween revelers Photo: Criss Images.

The Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit is the child of Moogfest who was kicked out of the house after three successful years.  The Moog Corporation took back the licensing of their name for their own festival scheduled to be held in April.  But original producers of Moogfest, picked up right where they left off in 2012 without missing a step and only making a name change.

The festival was never a “Moog” festival to start with but with MOEMS the range expanded considerable to embrace music from across music frontiers.  The range of the music could be triangulated in three acts, Jherek Bischoff, Silver Apples and Bassnectar.

Bass Nectar in Space+
Photo: Crissimages

Bassnectar was the revelation of the festival for me.  It’s one guy, Lorin Ashton, who stood on stage flanked by two laptops with a mélange of electronics in the middle.  I got there a few moments late and as I approached the Exploreasheville.com Arena (one of the silliest venue names ever), you could hear the building shuddering from the bass inside.  Entering from the back of the hall to a throng of bobbing people in full Halloween regalia on the floor, I felt like I was literally sucked into the crowd by Bassnectar’s hypnotic, throbbing beat.  As I threaded my way to the middle of the arena, Ashton bounced around onstage, long hair flailing as he moved from computer to computer, stopping in the middle to twist knobs, tap pads and swirl around on a Kaos Pad or two.   In fact, he didn’t seem to be on stage at all, but dissolved into a three dimensional landscape of shifting images projected front, back and sides.  Giant butterflies, rotating diagrams, digital noise and landscapes all moved in a constant flow.  Electronic rhythms pounded out of the speakers, as Ashton created drama and movement not through conventional melody but a collection of sound effects, electronic glitches and crushing grooves that dissolved before the inevitable bass drop.  He rebuilt tracks from his albums, including his remix of Nina Simone’s classic “Feeling Good.” I wondered if anyone in the audience recognized the jazz artists who were projected in distorted imagery during that track.  It could be argued that Bird, Diz and Max were the rave artists of their day, although I doubt few there knew who they were, let alone realized that none of them were on that 1965 Simone cut.

I’m still from the “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” school.  But as ecstatic as Bassnectar’s performance was, by the end of his set,  the deep bass and the volume, over 112 decibels, became physically nauseating.

Silver Apples’ Simeon @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

After Bassnectar’s arena filling audio-visual spectacle, Silver Apples seemed….. quaint.  Silver Apples was a drum and electronics duo from 1968.  Simeon Coxe made all his electronic sounds from an array of audio oscillators triggered with telegraph keys. They released two cult albums before breaking up, but they were unarguably the first electronic pop band.

Silver Apples Oscillations

Now 77 years old, a little frail and bespectacled with short, thin white hair, Simeon is the only surviving member of the group. His technology has been updated, but the sound remains almost exactly the same.  He even uses a trio of audio oscillators on which he plays his lead melodies and noises.  He performed music from those first two albums spinning oscillator melodies with the ghost of Danny Taylor’s drums.  Singing in a reedy voice against psychedelic projections, he intoned the largely trippy psychedelic lyrics of the band earnestly, but also with a bit of humor.  It was a charming performance.

Jherek Bischoff Ukelele Unplugged @ MOEMS

And then there’s Jherek Bischoff.  Ironically, he was the opening act of the festival, the irony being, he wasn’t electronic at all, launching this “Electronic” Music Summit with a ukelele.  But then, there’s a lot of arch irony in this young musician. Standing at 6’3” he seemed even taller with a light brown pompadour and wearing a skinny tuxedo.  He was like a cross between Buster Poindexter and Pee Wee Herman with the overbite of Kenneth from 30 Rock.

Other than his electric bass, which was a hollow-bodied violin-style Paul McCartney model, he was all acoustic, playing with a local string quartet. Bischoff makes a quirky instrumental sound that’s part chamber music, part easy-listening and part bossa nova with a pop sensibility.  His set was mostly instrumental except for a couple of songs where he was joined by singer Jen Goma from People Get Ready. Playing music from his twin albums, Composed and Scores: Composed Instrumentals, Bischoff charmed the crowd with his aww-shucks manner and compositions that suggested a more elegant time.  He also performed a couple of songs from a forthcoming ambient album, one of which ended his set with tremulous strings while small bells rang out from the back of the theatre creating an ethereal 3D soundscape. Performing in the lovely Diana Wortham Theater with its plush seats and vaguely Art Deco décor, it was a long way, in every regard, from Bassnectar’s sweating arena assault

God Speed You! Black Emperor Hide & Seek @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

You could find this contrast all over Mountain Oasis.  Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a post-rock who were more guitar metal and noise than electronic although they certainly spent a lot of time adjusting their many signal processors.  They played the big arena but shrunk their stage plot to a small semi-circle barricaded by guitar amps where all the guitarists sat down, staring at their foot pedals or kneeled down on the floor.   Two percussionists were in shadows while the violinist and upright bassist stood impassively.  In the dark, with only their black & white  post-apocalypse urban landscapes and noise projections giving them any light, they unleashed a one hour assault of overdrive guitar glory, occasionally breaking the fog of distortion for some sweet violin melodies or glissando guitar and glockenspiel in the midst of the storm.

Trent Reznor With Nine Inch Nails @MOEMS

Trent Reznor of NIN Ready to Rumble @MOEMS Photo: Criss Images

In certain ways, Godspeed is the avant-garde edge of the full frontal assault brought by Nine Inch Nails. Founder Trent Reznor, in biceps baring muscle shirt, fronted his musically muscular band illuminated by an elaborate light array. They played a lot of music from their latest album, Hesitation Marks, grinding out unyielding grooves to back up Reznor’s songs of anguish and angst.   There was little let-up in intensity except for a clunky Reznor keyboard solo and some inexplicable kamencheh, a middle eastern violin.  Other than that it was all slabs of distorted guitar, relentless drumming and electronic screams.

NIN can become plodding at times, but that wasn’t the case with a musician who influenced Trent Reznor: Gary Numan. This isn’t the robotic Numan of the “Cars” era.  He hasn’t been that way for a while.  With his jet black dyed hair, black t-shirt and black jeans, Numan was a Jesus of angst, flinging his arms out like Christ on the cross and jerking his body in tune to the music, often pouring water on his head and shaking it out like he’s just emerged from a baptismal bath.

Gary Numan Croonin’ @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

Numan’s voice is better than it has ever been. He’s lost that nasally whine and replaced it with an aggressive snarl.  He played several tracks from his latest album, Splinter (Songs of a Broken Mind) and several songs from his later period which mixes electronics and metal.  During a public interview session with journalist Geary Yelton earlier in the day, Numan lamented that people still only remember him for “Cars” (and in England “Are Friends Electric?”), but he pulled it out during his concert and played it with passion, albeit with a bit of a heavier edge.  But he didn’t have to.  This wasn’t a nostalgia audience.  They were as ready for Splinter’s “I Am Dust” as they were for “Down in the Park” from Replicas.  Gary Numan has been back for a while.  It’s time people caught up with him.

It was impossible to catch every act at the festival which featured five venues spread across 15 minutes walking distance with overlapping shows.  But except for two regrettable instances, I went nonstop music sets from 7 until 2 AM 3 nights in a row.

Darkside in Darkness @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

They were all highlights.  The duo called Darkside played before an impressively large audience in the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, considering they only have one album out, Psychic.  Like Godspeed, they favored shadows, standing in twin cones of low, smoke filled light, delivering snarling guitar leads over throbbing electronic drums and sequences like a pong game on acid. They recalled the little known French band Heldon circa 1978 and shared their dystopian vision.  It was like we were all in a bunker with bombs going off outside.

Ron & Russell Mael of Sparks – Life is a Cabaret @ MOEMS

The long-lived band, Sparks,  was more in line with Bischoff than anything else at the festival. The brothers Ron & Russel Mael took the large Diana Wortham stage and planted Ron far left at a single Roland keyboard (which he had renamed Ronald)  while Russell roamed around the otherwise empty stage. They call it their “Two Hands, One Mouth” tour. Apply sexual innuendo here.  Ron has traded in his Hitler mustache for a pencil look.  With his trousers hiked up above his waist, short hair slicked back and scowling eyes behind round hornrimmed glasses, he was like the cranky old geezer down the street.  Russell looked discomfortingly like a Hitler youth which is a good trick since he’s 65.  He had his black hair swept across his forehead Adolf-style, wearing black shirt, black tie and black shorts.  That image was intentionally undermined, however, by his black tights and black and white patent leather saddle shoes with the toes curved up in elfin fashion.

Their show was a cross between Joel Grey’s Cabaret and a Broadway tryout as they romped through their catalog with no accompaniment or backing tracks.  It was an arch performance to say the least with Russell Mael still able to summon that calliope voice.  It highlighted the fact that Sparks aren’t really rock musicians, but performance artists closer to Laurie Anderson than Mick Jagger.  You could easily imagine Anderson singing “Your Call’s Very Important To Us, Please Hold.”  They seemed thrown off early on by monitor sound issues.  At one point both musicians heatedly stormed the offstage mixing board.  But they settled in for an entertaining, if austere set.  And no one loved it more than Jherek Bishoff who sported a happy lunatic grin throughout the show.

Alan Howarth Trick or Death @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

On the same stage, Alan Howarth played his film music.  Best known for his work scoring John Carpenter films, he was accompanied by a manipulated video collage of movie clips including Escape from New York, Halloween II-infinity and They Live.  He assayed his scores with backing tracks while he played electric keyboard and synth-guitar.  It was an engaging medley that harkened back to an older electronic sound.

King Britt Getting Digable @ MOEMS
Photo: Diliberto

Philadelphia’s King Britt made his second festival appearance with his latest project, Fhloston Paradigm, named for Fhloston Paradise, the resort spaceship in The Fifth Element. Joined on stage by singer Pia Ercole and live visuals from Mike Todd, they created some deep space music that had EDM edges but was more redolent of 70s German space music.  Ercole sang wordless vocals that were looped, relying a bit too much on long oohs and aahs, while Britt played keyboards and computer creating deep throb ostinato rhythms and swirling textures.

Purity Ring’s Megan James @ MOEMS
Photo: Diliberto

I only caught a few songs from Animal Collective and Purity Ring, both of which seemed to have lively sets going. AC sat inside what looked like a abstract cartoon gap toothed mouth with projections on the teeth and roof of the mouth.  Purity Ring, a duo called in at the last minute to sub for Tricky, had no staging but diminutive vocalist Megan James held the audience, confidently singing their bright synth-pop.  Corin Roddick held down the electronic side, surrounded by what looked like small Chinese lanterns that the two would strike with drum sticks although their effect was somewhat ambiguous.

Animal Collective Open WInd @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

I regretfully missed Ulrich Schnauss and William Basinski and I wanted to see them both.  And after hearing Bassnectar, I would’ve liked to have seen Pretty Lights with a full band.  Bands like Deltron 3030 gave massive shows to the rap side of the spectrum.

Alex Patterson & Thomas Fehlman of The Orb @ MOEMS Photo: Diliberto

The festival ended with the now venerable ambient avatars, The Orb.  Celebrating their 25^th anniversary this year, The Orb is essentially the bald-headed Alex Paterson and whoever he can rope in with him.  For MOEMS it was electronic artist Thomas Fehlmann.  On the medium sized club stage of The Orange Peel, The Orb instantly set the mood with an abstract collage opening of found sounds, music snippets, disembodied spoken word, all swirling in a beat-free swirl.  The full house stood patiently waiting, letting their minds rove free in Orb space.  Then the rhythm kicked in and everyone went crazy.

Alex Patterson of The Orb at the controls @ MOEMS
Photo: Diliberto

This was classic Orb as Patterson picked up vinyl LPs, slotted in CDs and mixed and matched his sounds against the beats of Fehlman and the live mixed video projections which were by turns abstract, surreal and deliriously funny.  The Orb dropped in Miles Davis organ, Easy Listening strings, cartoon music, lots of dub, random announcements, old instruction records and a collage of noise. He didn’t play “Little Fluffy Clouds” but he did slip in the sequencer riff.

Like Silver Apples, there was quaintness to The Orb.  Their techniques harken back to early musique concrète of Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, only with a beat.  And unlike acts such as Bassnectar, they are avant-gardists at heart.  But they kept the room enthralled with the least amount of audience churn I experienced at the festival and proved a satisfying conclusion to a festival that looks backwards and forwards, sometimes simultaneously.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))

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Ascend the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit on Echoes.

Tonight on Echoes we talk to Ashley Capps,
Producer of the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit

There are many electronic music festivals out there from the Detroit Music Festival to the Ultra Music Festival.  But none have the breadth of acts you’ll find at the Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit, the successor to Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina.  (Moogfest is slated to relaunch the end of April, 2014) The music ranges from the ambient sounds of The Orb to the new wave electronics of Gary Numan to the dark obsessions of Nine Inch Nails.  Tonight, I plug in with Ashley Capps, the festivals promoter and talk about ukeleles, Silver Apples and Halloween darkness.

Ashley Capps of Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit.

There’s a lot of great Echoes acts at MOEMS including Ulrich Schnauss, The Orb, Jherek Bischoff, Gary Numan, Darkside, and Bass Nectar and a lot of bands I expect to blow my mind like Nine Inch Nails, Godspeed you! Black Emperor and Animal Collective.  I’ll be covering it all for Echoes, so check it out in the Echoes Blog, on Twitter @EchoesRadio, on Instagram @EchoesRadio and on Facebook @EchoesFans.

Find out about Mountain Oasis tonight on Echoes.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))
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Sign up for Echoes CD of the Month Club.
This month,  CD of the Month Club members will be getting Akara’s The World Beyond.  Follow the link to the Echoes CD of the Month Club and hear what you’ve been missing.