In terms of homemade instruments, Silver Apples’ oscillator-synth contraption, known as “the Simeon,” remains undersung. It has never gotten as much attention as the theremin, Harry Partch’s ensembles, Os Mutantes’ fuzz pedal, or Glenn Branca’s third bridge guitars. Operated by telegraph keys and foot pedals, the Simeon was more an ad hoc construction of weirdly humming parts than a functioning instrument. Its vibrating chrome shadow blended perfectly into the pop elation of Silver Apples’ recordings. Unplayable by anybody besides its namesake inventor, it disappeared into the lunar mists when the band dissolved in the early ’70s.
Heard now, the band’s two ’60s albums don’t channel psychedelia as much as the hard-wired promise of the space age. Undeniably pop, inventor and songwriter Simeon Coxe’s songs were playful and soulful and cosmic, and—outside the New York underground—fairly sunken on their original release. Somehow unrelated to rock‘n’roll, “I Have Known Love” and others were more like open-hearted show-stoppers arranged for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Returning to the Simeon in 1996, Coxe revived the Silver Apples for a few years of albums and collaborations and tours. During one of the latter, Coxe broke his neck in a van accident, rethinking and stripping down the Simeon upon his recovery.
Now 78, Coxe (professionally, just “Simeon”) and the spirit of his invention return for Clinging to a Dream, the first Silver Apples LP since the instrument and its creator’s reconstructions. At the core of the album, Coxe pilots his electronics towards beautiful and strange-colored waters. The opener “The Edge of Wonder” floats on omniscient myth-chants not dissimilar to Brian Eno’s Another Green World. At its best, Coxe pairs a wide-eyed sweetness with far-out electronics, as on “Fractal Flow,” where a nearly Vaudevillian melody keeps the space age alive and twinkling. Other pieces, like “Colors,” are rich and overt tone poems.
On “Susie,” a bouncing portal to a parallel universe of Radiophonic pop, Simeon finds an all-new future, like an algorithm-generated number for a food-obsessed A.I. pop star. But elsewhere, the future sounds a little too much like the present. On the bubbling “Concerto for Monkey and Oscillator,” the new-fangled beats overwhelm its tender oddity, sounding like an avatar-less Soundcloud account pumping synth jams into the ether (and probably with some Silver Apples elsewhere on its playlists).
Despite Silver Apples’ hiatus, Coxe hasn’t been inactive, most lately releasing 2013’s Amphibian Lark, a self-titled debut by a new duo. When he performs solo, Coxe’s new set-up finds him returning, at times, to the mysterious place that made the band’s original albums so appealing. But much of Clinging to a Dream finds him exploring sounds beyond the means of his original unwieldy oscillators. The results aren’t always as compelling, but one can sense the liberation in his new means of expression. Clinging to a Dream is a Silver Apples album in every way, but it rarely achieves the fully enveloping richness of some of the band’s ’90s work, which included 1999’s Spectrum collaboration A Lake of Teardrops as well as 1998’s *Decatur—*a full 42-minutes of oscillators and, in retrospect, an accidental requiem for the Simeon itself.
While Simeon and original drummer Danny Taylor once soundtracked the Moon landing during a giant free concert in Central Park, the Silver Apples of the 21st century are making music in a very different future. The new model Apples don’t always achieve liftoff, but Simeon still possesses the coordinates for dazzling new places.
