Silver Apples Has Been Making Electronic Music Since You Were in Diapers

For our latest episodes of Supersonic, we headed to Mountain Oasis Festival (October 25-27) in Asheville, North Carolina. In it's debut year, the festival presented an impressive line-up spanning from Nine Inch Nails and Gary Numan to Bassnectar and Disclosure, playing in clubs and arenas throughout the Downtown area—kind of like a mini-SXSW for the mountain set. While there we interviewed Cut Copy, Mount Kimbie, Silver Apples, and T. Williams about what goes into making their music.

Simeon Coxe has been making "EDM"—that is, electronic dance music—since you were in diapers. In this interview, he explains how he and friend Danny Taylor were living as street people in NYC in the late 60s and formed a wild, weird psychdelic freakout of a band called Silver Apples by soldering together a bunch of electronic junk they found on the street. Fast forward 40 years or so, and Silver Apples are considered pioneers of electronic music, as well as inspirations to the likes of Cluster, Portishead, Radiohead, and other bands with head in their name.

In this exclusive interview—cut together with footage of Simeon working the knobs of his many oscillators—we talk to Simeon about sound vibrations, turning junk into gold, performing live, and making people think about sex. Amen.