THE APPLES IN STEREO
The SiS Interview by Rusty Roberts

The Apples In Stereo returned this year with New Magnetic Wonder, an album ripping through the CMJ charts as the band runs through their first tour of the states in years. Stranded In Stereo recently had a chance to chat it up with frontman Robert Schneider and bassist Eric Allen.

Maybe some people know it and maybe some don’t, but Robert Schneider is a legacy in the recording industry. In 1992 alongside friends Bill Doss, Will Cullen Hart and Jeff Mangum, the Elephant 6 Recording Company was founded. The label was devoted to releasing music by artists that had a foundation in the classics, artists that were influenced by the likes of The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and various other sunny pop bands of the 60s and 70s. Though Elephant 6 is now a defunct entity, it lives on with bands like Of Montreal, Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Apples In Stereo, the latter of which is fronted by Schneider.

After a five-year drought and an arduous year recording in multiple studios across the country, the cornerstone of the Elephant 6 movement returned this year with New Magnetic Wonder. It finds Schneider and the rest of the band (featuring guitarist John Hill, bassist Eric Allen and recently departed drummer/vocalist Hilarie Sidney) at the top of their game. Wonder is an album that flourishes with bright hooks, big guitars, layers upon layers of sounds and different textures and a new musical scale based not so much on Pythagoras. The 24 songs on the album are made up of 14 conventional songs, and 12 musical segue-ways or “link tracks.” The band feels these links aren’t chinks in the chain, but instead give Wonder a sense of continuity.

“A pause between songs would allow the listener to come back to reality at the end of a song, but we prefer to avoid reality for as long as possible!” jokes Apples bassist Eric Allen. “The link tracks really help the album flow and gives the feeling of being one piece of music instead of just being a collection of individual songs.” The artwork for Wonder is just as big and bountiful as the album itself. “We consider our band to be colorful and psychedelic, so it’s natural that the album art would be,” states Allen, referring to the album package put together by Andrew McLaughlin.

With New Magnetic Wonder, the Apples have become the flagship artist for Elijah Wood’s newly-founded imprint, Simian. The pairing came to fruition after the band befriended the actor at South by Southwest a few years back. Once Wood hooked up with Yep Roc for distribution, the foundation was set for the Apples version of a record label wet dream. “Most bands get to sign with one great label. We’ve got two,” states an elated Allen. “Elijah had wanted to start a label, so when he and Yep Roc joined forces, we got the best thing we could imagine.”

What could be even more of a Wonder than Frodo running a record label is the contributions from Neutral Milk Hotel recluse Jeff Mangum, who not only played drums and added vocals to the record, but is also credited as playing the ‘cow object.’

“Cow objects can vary depending on local customs or even the preferences the individual cows,” explains Allen. “In this case, it was an object that looked like a brass bell.” Where some might be surprised that Mangum is on the record, Allen notes that Mangum “wanted to play on the record and has played in the Apples in the distant past.”

Probably the most talked about aspect of the new record is lead singer Robert Schneider’s discovery of the non-Pythagorean Scale, a term that brings music and math together. Wonder comes enhanced with documents and video files of Schneider explaining and demonstrating his newly found scale of sound, based on a mathematical equation that Schneider quickly pieced together after his discovery.

“It occurred to me that a musical scale could be made from natural logarithms,” Schneider told me. “My friend (and original Apples bassist) Jim McIntyre was interested in modern classical music and how instruments are exactly tuned, while at the same time I was very interested in prime numbers and an approach to prime numbers that involved wave forms and the natural logarithm.”

When he wasn’t scheming away like a mad scientist in the recording studio, Schneider made an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report late last year. In what he thought would be some small mention for the band turned in to what Schneider notes as “an awesome experience” to help defend Colbert with his guitar off against The Decemberists, singing the poignantly titled “Stephen, Stephen.”

“I just wanted to give props to my favorite TV personality, I was totally surprised they asked me to appear on the show.” Schneider remarked. “Apparently Stephen loved the song so much that he danced around the office singing it all week.”