condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (light ring and spine wear)

With original innersleeve.

The first electronic composition ever commissioned by a record label expressly for LP release. Nonesuch, Jac Holzman's budget classical offshoot of Elektra, gave Subotnick a $500 advance to produce a two-side piece for the new stereo audiophile market in late 1966. Subotnick had just moved from San Francisco to New York to take a residency at the new Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. He recorded the work in his Bleecker Street studio over winter 1966-67 on the Buchla 100 Series modular synthesizer, the instrument he had co-developed with Don Buchla at the San Francisco Tape Music Center since 1963.

The title comes from W.B. Yeats's The Song of Wandering Aengus. Two parts, each about fifteen minutes. Silver Apples broke with the then-dominant academic style of electronic composition (the Stockhausen/Babbitt approach, all pitch and timbre, no metric rhythm) by including extended sections with steady pulse. The first pressing sold out and the album took Stereo Review's Record of the Year. William S. Harvey designed the iconic psychedelic sleeve. Added to the National Recording Registry in 2010.