Silver Apples are an entirely unique entity, there’s no one else that sounds quite like them and that’s a rare thing in the world of ‘popular’ music and should be cherished. Not that Silver Apples achieved much popular success in their late ‘60s heyday, when a series of misfortunes befell their second album Contact, following up their frankly incredible eponymous debut, and then sunk them without a trace. The Garden is their lost work and a very belated third LP released nearly thirty years after most of it was recorded. After losing touch after being forced to wind up the band in 1968 due to a lawsuit from Pan Am Airlines (yeah, it’s complicated) Danny Taylor and Simeon Cox were reunited through the chance playing of one of their tracks on the radio, and the diligence of the DJ to try and put them back in touch. Taylor was the drummer, whilst Cox (who has always been known as Simeon only) provided electronic compositions from his own home-made synths, oscillators and various other noise-making machines. Sometimes he added strange, strained surrealist-minimalist vocals over the top. Sometimes not. The tracks on this album consist of seven complete songs from 1969 and a further seven drum instrumentals which had been languishing in a box in Taylor’s attic for 27 years. Once reunited in 1998, Simeon added over the top his own brand of improvisational ‘noodling’, hence the Noodle name for half of the tracks. The old and newly fashioned tracks are alternated throughout, which provides a rather disjointed feel to the album at times, but presumably they felt that a whole side of contemporary ‘noodles’ supplementing an A side of 1969 originals would highlight the lack of current inspiration. In fact, this is not the case at all. Whereas there’s no vocals on the updated tracks, the overall sound is remarkably cohesive. They haven’t lost their experimental charm. #silverapples #simeoncoxe #electronicmusic #experimentalmusic #oscillation #synthesizer #avantgardemusic #nowlistening #vinyl #recordcollection #randomrecordreview https://www.instagram.com/p/CNBAR4OMjj8/?igshid=40dgwzdq4tck