Simeon Coxe, the driving force behind electronic music pioneers Silver Apples, has died aged 82.

Coxe formed Silver Apples in New York City in 1967 from the ashes of a more conventional rock outfit, The Overland Stage Electric Band. Supposedly unhappy with Coxe’s interest in electronic oscillators, the rest of the band drifted away leaving just Coxe and drummer Danny Taylor, at which point they renamed themselves Silver Apples, after a line in the WB Yeats poem “The Song Of Wandering Aengus”.

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Constructing a rig that eventually consisted of numerous oscillators – plus pedals, tape delays and other gizmos – Silver Apples recorded two albums for the Kapp label and jammed with Jimi Hendrix. However their 1969 album Contact was pulled from stores after a dispute with Pan Am (it featured a wrecked aeroplane on the back cover) and the duo went their separate ways, with Coxe becoming a local TV news reporter in Alabama.

Coxe reformed Silver Apples in the 1990s after being hailed as an influence by groups such as Stereolab and Portishead. He recorded two albums with a new lineup of the band, before reuniting with Taylor to tour around the completion of shelved 1970 album The Garden.

Taylor died in 2005 but Coxe continued to record and tour as Silver Apples, releasing a sixth album, Clinging To A Dream, in 2016.

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“What an amazing guy he was,” Tweeted Portishead’s Geoff Barrow. “An inspiration not just musically but in life.”