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Review: 'Silver Apples'
'Headrow House, Leeds, 24th August'   


-  Genre: 'Dance'

Our Rating:
Supping a pint of Jaipur in the North Bar, over the road from the Belgrave at 7:30, I decided to see if I could find any mention of stage times for the evening’s show. With no event on Facebook and no info on the venue’ website, I spotted a number of ticket agencies had announced a change of venue to Headrow House, the even more hipsterish sister venue of the hipsterish Belgrave. Thankfully it’s just around the corner, so I was still in time to witness Joanne’s set.

How often do you find you’re able to say ‘I’ve never seen that before’ these days? It’s certainly an infrequent experience for me. But the unassumingly-monikered Joanne genuinely offers something new. Sonically she creates dark, rumbling electronica and spiralling, almost euphoric synths juxtasposed with far more melodic synth work. Prurient comes to mind by way of a comparison but he sound is less gnarly, mangled abrasive. So what’s new? Behind her, a screen shows her chopping and editing computer code as she edits her digitally-encoded manipulations in real-time It’s not only novel, but a brilliant demystification of her creative methods. It’s a classically avant-garde practice of, highly effective, not least of all in that it’s an innovative way of providing a visual element to the standard person standing at a laptop’ performance. It helps that she renders an interesting set, packed with variety, texture, tonal range and crackling beats.

The same can’t be said, sadly for floppy-ringed hipster Game Program, He spends a lot of time pushing his quiff back and stroking his chin. Needless to say, the few mates he’d brought with him, being hipsters, talked through the entirety of his set, during which he ground out half an hour of the most turgid, self-absorbed and utterly forgettable dance music.

There’s nothing forgettable about electronic pioneer Simeon Coxe, aka Silver Apples. Having first appeared in 1967, the trippy psychedelic songs sounded light years ahead of their time courtesy of the custom-made synths. A full decade before Suicide’s first album, Silver Apples were thumping out synthesised beats, while the bleeps, whistles and oscillations which defined their sound have long been fetishized by analogue enthusiasts.

Simeon’s not only moved with the times (he’s been known to cover Portishead’s ‘We Carry On’ in his live set) but remained ahead of them, and if new album ‘Clinging to a Dream’ is heavily steeped in retroisms, it also sounds extremely contemporary. The sound radiating from the stage very much replicates the reverby wall of sound that characterises the album, and it’s a joy to watch a truly veteran knob-twiddler still doing his thing with a bank of dials and wires, illuminated by a desk lamp. The vocals are partially submerged beneath the shivering bass and woozy sonic waves, but where the live sound marks a departure is on the prominence of the rhythms, making for a much more up-front sonic experience.

He’s not just a master of his art, but knows how to build a set, too. The final track is a ten-minute behemoth that boosts the volume and blasts out a pounding beat and a thunderous groove, bringing a superb set to a climactic end.
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Silver Apples - Headrow House, Leeds, 24th August
Silver Apples
Silver Apples - Headrow House, Leeds, 24th August
Game Program
Silver Apples - Headrow House, Leeds, 24th August
Joanne