9. Silver ApplesSilver Apples

I was 20 years old when I moved from Sydney to New York City and everything was painfully exciting. Shortly after arriving, I met a guy who’d just broken up with his long-term girlfriend (not exactly true) and we started seeing each other as I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, naive little crumpet. I was pretty besotted, he would rip stacks of amazing records for me, totally opened my eyes to a load of Krautrock bands like Can, NEU! and Popol Vuh. This record was one of the many in the pile and was just so compelling – just the one record from these guys? Were they another band from Cologne? The cover was elementary, the music way more psychedelic, jammy and for lack of a better word, sounded like techno. In my mind, this is where it all began. The drumming wasn’t as motorik as I had expected, it was spacious and meditative. They were just two oddballs from New York, it’s 1968 and they were veritable pioneers. Kraftwerk before Kraftwerk. I still hear Danny Taylor’s distinctive snare patterns in modern electronic music. I’ve stolen so much from him. One of the coolest bands of all time.