Simeon Coxe III as the Silver Apples, live at The Joshua Light Show Fest, May 18, 2010
In contrast to the younger, hip-looking crowd at the night’s previous Woods/MV EE show, the audience for the Oneida/Silver Apples bill was a bit older, with the air of serious-minded music fans. Due in large part to Mr. Silver Apples himself (Simeon Coxe), the theater was sold out for the evening. Oneida took the stage to expectant applause from the audience as wunderkind drummer Kid Millions sat behind his kit and kicked off his signature percussive assault in rare form. Drawing heavily on their single-track monster Preteen Weaponry from 2008 — while leaving plenty of room for improvised digressions and the organized chaos that defines their sound — the five-piece group were complemented by a light show that felt more frantic than the previous night’s. The strobe effect was generously deployed, and Oneida — minus regular member Bobby Matador, but with the rare addition of founding former member Papa Crazee — didn’t hesitate to respond by laying down a weighty wall of sound, complimented by a droning rhythm section.
The set proceeded through a series of distinct movements, with the light show responding to each shift in tone. First up was a hellish underworld, with cascading sheets of feedback and Millions’ propulsive drumming setting the scene as the screen flickered with dark reds and oranges. Gradually, Oneida ascended to an earthier plane, settling into a more brooding, downbeat mode as the harsh colors gave way to a lush green. Instead of cascading in all directions, the jam became more focused, steadily gaining momentum. Oneida’s career-long engagement with the possibilities of repetition in its various guises took center stage as loops of feedback ebbed and flowed, stretching and contracting time. Audience members’ heads bobbed in unison as the band locked into a psychic groove of monumental proportions. (more…)
After months of meticulous astrological analysis and deep-space observation, our in-house Kaleidoscope experts have asked me to issue a public warning to all those residing in the greater New York area, Northern New Jersey, and Southern Connecticut. Due to a fortuitous shift in planetary alignment, we have every reason to believe that a vintage aerocar embossed with the words “Silver Apples” — and housing one of the world’s first musico-astro-pilots — will be performing an impromptu crash landing on the roof of Coco66 in Greenpoint on Sunday, May 16. To ensure that the craft arrives safely at its destination — and does not accidentally fall straight into the nearby Newtown Creek — we have asked some of our generation’s finest cosmonauts — Burning Star Core and Love Like Deloreans — to convene beforehand and project some inviting improvisatory soundwaves into the stratosphere. DJs Frank (Keepaway) and Bryce (Behavior, 45sON33) will be injecting some slow and screwy dynamism in the gaps, and Wierd Records‘ very own DJ Frankie Teardrop will be hosting his Exotic Birds party in the front room. If you have never witnessed a New York City rooftop landing before, please be sure to dress appropriately. Full details on the poster below.* (more…)
This past Sunday was jam-packed, but I am glad that I got to stop by Newtown Radio for an hour and squeeze some sound files into this most musty and archival of Arthur Radio episodes. Among the transmission’s many mind-warping attributes, DJ Ivy Meadows (Camilla Padgitt-Coles) took a dip into her bottomless vault of spoken text recordings, which includes the sound of Freud’s own voice and a 2003 home recording by the legendary American poet/filmmaker/wanderer Ira Cohen. In the poem “Atlantis Express,” excerpted below, Ira provides as fitting an introduction to the episode as any:
Let’s take a silver train underground
to the back streets of Atlantis
thru the corrugated iron roots &
then to the peak itself, to the
saddle of the last ridge past strewn
boulders,
finally meandering thru cascading snow
wearing miner’s hats on the perpendicular
dark night &
going up to the edge of the Southern Cross
where we reach at last the pure white
glistening glaciers &
begin to chant over bones in rags
of Scorpio
Armless in the sticky substance how could
they ever have had a chance?
Permission will not be required
only poems of blood offered to
the memory of TREE
It is not ice which is eternal
but the fury of the absolute
separating the void from the spirit
of man,
uplifting like life when it is used
against itself,
that is, Radical Love — & again, we
are reduced to living beings
Caught by the instant
we are taken away
We live in the imprint of the flame
& we are helmeted within the internal
blackness
where the ray begins its passage
across the indignant sky
Vain clouds uncaring in a tangle of
crossbeams
culminate in the hermaphroditic mirror…
“Arthur Radio Transmission #13: Clouds in the Hermaphroditic Mirror”
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Simeon Coxe III as the Silver Apples, live at The Joshua Light Show Fest, May 18, 2010 
