The Apples in stereo Rock Yo Gabba Gabba

The Apples in stereo helped kick off the new season of popular music-loving kids show Yo Gabba Gabba this week with their song “That’s My Family.” Produced by band leader Robert Schneider, this sunny pop tune and video blend perfectly with the day-glo sentiment of the show. This season the Nick Jr. show will also feature musical like The Roots, The Flaming Lips and MGMT, amongst others.

Check out The Apples’ song and video is currently and exclusive on the E! channel’s website. Direct link here.

The Apples in stereo’s greatest hits collection #1 Hits Explosion is out now on Yep Roc / SImian / Elephant 6 Records and their follow up to the critically acclaimed New Magnetic Wonder, entitled “Travelers In Space And Time” is due next year.

Robert Schneider To Be Keynote Interview At Australia’s Big Sound Music Conference

#1 Hits Explosion

Marks First Australian Appearances In The Band’s Storied History

The Apples in stereo Release #1 Hits Explosion September 1, 2009

Greatest Hits Puts An Exclamation On Band’s Lengthy Legacy

(New York, NY): On the heels of The Apples in stereo’s release of “#1 Hits Explosion,” a greatest hits album featuring psychedelic pop at its finest, Robert Schneider is poised to be a featured keynote interview at Australia’s Big Sound Music Conference in Brisbane, Australia on September 9-11, 2009.

Schneider will be seen and heard alongside other important speakers at Big Sound, including Van Dyke Parks, legendary lyricist for Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

This will mark the first time that Schenider will perform Apples material in Australia and comes shortly after one of the band’s hit songs, “Energy,” has been featured in a major advertising campaign in the country. Schenider will also perform two other public shows:

Saturday September 12 – Sydney – Hopetoun Hotel – 8pm doors
Sunday September 13 – Melbourne – The Workers Club – 4pm doors

“#1Hits Explosion” will be released through Yep Roc, Simian and E6 Records physically with digital going through the band. Fans can purchase the 16 track compilation directly from the band at Applesinstereo.com.

Tom Kuhn, “Father of The Modern Yo-Yo,” will be featured on WNYC’s esteemed talk-radio program “The Brian Lehrer Show” on Wednesday, August 5th at approximately 11:30 AM EST.

NYC Metro Area: 93.9 FM or 820 AM
Listen LIVE: http://www.wnyc.org/
Brian Lehrer: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/

Kuhn, recently the subject of pieces in Time Out New York and San Francisco Examiner, will be in New York City on August 8th for the 2009 YoYo Open, as he receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from the event.

“The State of Yo: Tom Kuhn’s Yo-Yo Revolution,” a documentary, is currently a Tractor Beam / Original Spin production.

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For Immediate Release:

LOST IN THE TREES: Tour Dates!

Preview them here: http://www.myspace.com/lostinthetrees

For guest list or review copies of their latest album, All Alone In An Empty House, please email me.

Jul 04 | Eno River Festival | Durham, NC
Jul 05 | Plaza Bowl Duckpin | Richmond, VA
Jul 06 | Tea Bazaar | Charlottesville, VA
Jul 07 | V Club | Huntington, WV
Jul 08 | Howard’s Club H | Bowling Green, OH
Jul 09 | Schubas | Chicago, IL
Jul 10 | Firebird | St. Louis, MO
Jul 11 | Natasha’s Bistro | Lexington, KY
Jul 12 | Pilot Light | Knoxville, TN
Jul 13 | 3rd & Lindsley | Nashville, TN
Jul 16 | Blind Tiger | Greensboro, NC
Jul 17 | The Milestone | Charlotte, NC
Jul 18 | Bobo Gallery | Asheville, NC
Jul 19 | Cat’s Cradle | Carrboro, NC
Aug 20 | Wallace Plaza | Chapel Hill, NC

The Apples in stereo To Release Best-Of Collection

#1 Hits Explosion Street Date 9/1/09

June 29, 2009 (Chapel Hill, NC) – The shiny pop centerpiece of the famed Elephant 6 collective, The Apples in stereo was born of Robert Schneider’s infatuation with sound and his near pathological compulsion to write the perfect pop song. Schneider’s attempts, and some would argue his successes, in that quest have now been compiled for the 16-track best-of collection #1 Hits Explosion due on Yep Roc September 1st, 2009.

Citing Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys as their root text a decade before it was indie-en vogue, Robert and former and future band members Hilarie Sidney, Jim McIntyre, Chris Parfitt, John Hill, Eric Allen, Chris McDuffie, Bill Doss, John Ferguson, John Dufilho, along with countless friends and cohorts, used their basement-D.I.Y. beginnings as a launching pad into a kaleidoscopic galaxy of sound. Constantly mutating from debut album Fun Trick Noisemaker through recent opus New Magnetic Wonder, that galaxy has expanded from 4-track recordings made in Robert’s bedroom to 100-track sonic experiments complete with new musical scales. The collection will look back at six albums of Apples material, highlighting 16 of the most well-known tracks of their already classic output.

“We have always pursued new sounds and different directions, trying to make something special,” says Schneider. “There is no better way to have a band.”

Through his songwriting and playing with The Apples, his influential production work for other Elephant 6 bands (Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control) and his many side projects (Marbles, Thee American Revolution, Ulysses), Schneider has been long respected as an architect of modern indie-pop. In recent years he has performed in feature films (Mike Myers’ The Love Guru) and on the Colbert Report (‘Stephen, Stephen’). He’s given lectures at prestigious Mathematical Association of America conferences, had his songs interpreted on American Idol (‘Energy’), and completed a children’s album (Robbert Bobbert & the Bubble Machine), all amid touring with The Apples and writing and recording new material. All of these extra-curricular activities have enabled Robert to bring the Elephant 6 ‘create-anything you can, any way-you-can’ ethos into the eye-line of popular consciousness and the mass media, yet #1 Hits Explosion marks the beginning in a new phase of focus on The Apples culminating in a new album in 2010. According to Schneider, “We are currently working on an album of soul music, filtered through a UFO.”

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Check it out here!

Blindworm Guitars Creates One-Of-A-Kind Elephant 6 Guitar for The Apples in stereo’s Robert Schneider
(VIDEO) Schneider Excitedly Accepts Custom-Made Guitar Made of Meteorite
Schneider’s Kids Project Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine Announces Summer Shows

(Colorado Springs, CO):   Colorado based luthier Andrew Scott has created a one of a kind Elephant 6 guitar for The Apples in stereo’s Robert Schneider.

The guitar, a playable piece of art made out of meteorite, elephant bones and combination of Walnut and Poplar woods, and shaped to play and perform much like a super-charged version of Schneider’s Danelectro DC-3. Scott came up with the idea in order to celebrate Schneider’s role in the long-enduring and profoundly influential Elephant 6 Collective which spawned The Apples in stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control and numerous other members of their friendly confab.

“This Blindworm guitar plays incredibly well. It is the coolest, most beautiful, psychedelic guitar I have ever played!” enthuses Schneider. “The inlaid Elephant 6 logo is made of meteorite dust, and on the headstock, the elephant’s eyes are made of dinosaur bones. It feels like I am holding a living creature.”

“This guitar was custom designed down to the last detail,” explains Blindworm’s Andrew Scott. “This process started with tons of research into the sound qualities, materials, and design that would best accommodate Robert.” (See detailed pics after the jump.)

Click to see the Blindworm Elephant 6 Guitar Video Link

“I acquired a model of one of Robert’s favorite guitars, an original Danelectro DC-3 and took the favored qualities of this guitar (scale, weight, proportion, tone, etc.) and combined it with improved construction methods. Additionally, countless hours were spent watching how Robert plays a guitar, paying attention to strumming and picking style, how guitars sit with his arm and body, what sounds he uses.”

“The pickups were carefully selected to provide extensive range of new and familiar sounds for Robert. For his environmental conscience, only domestic woods were used. A hand rubbed oil finish was applied for the same reasons, as well as to give the instrument a softer smoother feel and improved tonality.”

“This guitar has its own life, and has been treated so since its conception. It listened to albums and albums of The Apples in stereo and other of Robert’s projects and videos during construction. When this guitar finally reached his hands, it already knew him.  It needed him to feel normal and be a part of him before it ever left my shop!”
Schneider is currently at work on The Apples in stereo’s new album, tentatively titled “Travellers in Space and Time” but will be performing as his alter-ego kids’ project Robbert Bobbert and The Bubble Machine on the following dates:

Saturday, June 13: Children’s Day / South Street Seaport / New York, NY
(also performing: Zambelli Fireworks and The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra)

Sunday, June 14: World Cafe Live / Peanut Butter And Jams

Monday, August 31:  Children’s Day / Jay Pritzker Pavilion / Millennium Park / Chicago, IL

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The Elephant 6 Guitar Technical Specifics:

- Solid wood, five piece neck through construction of Walnut with Poplar stripes
- Solid Poplar body
- Osage Orange fingerboard, nut, truss rod cover, pickguard, (same family as ebony, but domestic)
- Meteorite (collected in NW Africa) inlay for side fret markers, Elephant Six logo, and Blindworm Guitars logo.
- Lower elephant (upside down) is Indian, with pronounced trunk carved in the poplar body.
- Upper elephant is African, and carved into Walnut, with Osage Orange tusks
- Dinosoaur bone excavated in Colorado fills in the upper elephants’ eyes and the Blindworm snake’s eyes
- Custom made Walnut and Poplar knobs and switch
- 25″ scale, 24 jumbo frets
- Cream colored Duncan P-Rails, 2 Vol. 2 Tone. 3-way selector
- Sperzel locking tuners

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Robert Schneider is the lead Composer, Arranger and Producer of The Apples in stereo, Robbert Bobbert, Marbles, and Ulysses, and was one of the founding members of The Elephant 6 Collective. He is also a well-known producer-engineer, having worked with such notables as Beulah, Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control.

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The Apples in stereo’s “Energy” Featured on American Idol

On Wednesday night’s American Idol  the long-running weekly Ford commercial featuring AI contestants singing pop classics added another musical gem to its repertoire. The Apples’ song “Energy” from their 2007 album New Magnetic Wonder  was featured in the prominent in-show Ford spot by way of an enthusiastic re-recorded version featuring the remaining contestants. Recently the Ford-sponsored segment has included artists such as Britney Spears, Queen, Lykke Li and the J. Geils Band.

“Energy” will be included in the upcoming Apples best of collection “#1 Hits Explosion” due out later this year on Simian/Yep Roc/Elephant 6.

Watch the Ford commercial here.

Watch the original video for “Energy directed by Elijah Wood here.

Tonight American Idol ran a Ford promo where the contestants sang “Energy” from “New Magnetic Wonder.” Weird. I suppose that good songs take on a life of their own?

Watch it here.

Read about it in more detail via Optical Atlas.

Lost in the Trees to perform this Thurs, 3/26 at Union Hall, Brooklyn. Show time is 8:00PM.

Please check out Carrboro, NC’s Lost in the Trees’ show this Thursday.
Preview here:  (check out “Fireplace,” “Walk Around The Lake” and “Lost In The Snow”)
Video here:  (skip first 30 seconds “Walk Around The Lake”)

I first became aware of this band about a year ago and have since seen them live and their live show blew me away. They performed recently at Schubas’ “Tomorrow Never Knows Festival” earlier in the winter. They are playing New York the Tuesday after SXSW and would love for you to check them out.

They have self-released an ep and lp on their own Trekky Records. However, I’m certain that they are flying under the radar of most of the industry.

“Melodic chamber-pop that is as musically ambitious as it is lyrically precious.” -All Music Guide

“Orchestral and ambitious…intensely lush.” -Pitchfork Media

“A sublime blending of Prokofiev’s ”Peter and the Wolf” with a dash of Vivaldi and the vocal stylings of a suaver Ben Gibbard from Death Cab.” -Entertainment Weekly

Lost In The Trees: Biography

Multi-instumentalist/songwriter/composer Ari Picker of the folk orchestra Lost in the Trees, began writing songs at age 15 in his hometown of Bynum, NC and started with instrumental music a mere two years later. Several years later, he would end up studying Film Music at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.

“I started listening to Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd and that really inspired me! I wanted to be able to write a composition like that,” Picker explains. “So, I taught myself how to read and write music, and then started composing in 10th grade.”

Having taken a leave of absence to give his project life, Picker moved back to North Carolina, where he had grown up and found a network of talented artists in which to rely upon. This “folk orchestra” concept, with arrangements written completely by Picker, include violin, viola, cello, trombone, french horn, tuba, accordion, bells, musical saw, banjo, mandolin, guitar, bass and drums, amongst other instruments.