Bio - Electronic Music Composer and Producer

ElectronicMusic

Electronic music influences for Apell include Unkle who were formed by DJ Shadow and James Lavelle. This style of guitars and downtempo beats inspired a musical direction for several Apell tracks. Other electronic music composers like Squarepusher, The Chemical Brothers & Amon Tobin have also provided further inspiration for Apell’s electronic music.

Squarepusher is an obvious influence with the use of jazz / funk electric bass though Apell tends to avoid Squarepusher’s more manic industrial sounds and frantic drum programming preferring to stick more to grooves and melodies. Check out the Squarepusher influenced track Silly Cyclist.

Rock Music

Rock music from classic bands such as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa and (mid 70’s) King Crimson have influenced the bass and guitar playing and production used in Apell’s electronic music. Being a rock guitarist prior to getting into electronic music this rock music inspires sounds used in creating electronica. Check out tracks such as Digirap for an example of rock influenced electronic music.

The music produced by Apell is also inspired by newer bands like Radiohead and U2 for their sound production in creating lush soundscapes. For example listen to the cover of George Harrison’s song Long Long Long from the Beatles White Album.

Jazz Music

Jazz influences used throughout Apell’s music have been inspired by the music of:

Miles Davis especially his 70s funk fusion period – Listen to Hash Browns Remix

John Coltrane for his intense sax playing – Listen to the Sax Playing in Lust

Weather Report for the funky jazz grooves with electronic instrumentation

Mahavishnu Orchestra for the sheer intensity and high quality of the musicianship.

Bass Guitar

Bass was originally taken up for the acoustic rock band Bonestring which featured the much sampled drummer Sam Geoghegan.  Anthony is a staunch believer finger playing (no pick!) His playing style is fast, busy and funky.

Players that have influenced him include Flea, Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke and Rocco Prestia. Distortion, Auto Wah, Filters, Delay and other effects are also used to create different sounds to suit the electronic music. Listen to bass solos in Dubya.

Guitar

Guitar was self taught from the age of 14 being much cooler to play and more portable than the piano. Anthony furiously spent his teenage years learning to play like Jimi Hendrix resulting in years of many self indulgent guitar solos.

Today there are fewer solos and the guitar (electric & acoustic) is used more as a textural compositional tool within an electronic music context.
For an example listen to Tomorrow.

Saxophone

As he learnt the sax in high school Anthony discovered his love of jazz through artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman & Eric Dolphy. Listen to Entertainment Complex for some furious Apell Sax.

Keyboards

The piano was the original instrument through taking piano lessons as a kid leading to a grade 5 piano certificate.

Keyboards used include an old Yamaha CP35 electric piano (as heard on Dreaming Of Sleeping & Summer) The style of keyboards and synths used in Apell’s electronic music compositions varies greatly from a blues / jazz style to crazy synthesizer noodling - Listen to Hash Browns Remix

Drums

Most of the drums on the 1st Apell album were played by Anthony himself. His favourite players include Billy Cobham, Elvin Jones, John Bonham, Terry Bozzio and Tony Williams. Now more drum samples and loops are used due to the ease of working with prerecorded beats and drum samplers.

Sam Geoghegan

Several Apell tracks feature drums (such as Wrinkle and The Gabbler) from Sam Geoghegan. Anthony and Sam have been in various bands together for over 10 years. His drumming style developed from his obsession with Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and later with a love of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Billy Cobham and Tony Williams of Miles Davis fame. According to Sam 1976 was when music reached its ultimate peak (when he says this keep in mind that he doesn’t like, ABBA, Kiss or punk rock!)

Rachel Hawkins

Rachel sings on the electronic music tracks Tomorrow from Beaver Street & Beyond and Don’t Let it Bring You Down, the Neil Young Cover on Reconstituted. Her mellow haunting vocal style perfectly suits the multilayered Massive Attack styled tracks.

Jane Willison

Her vocal talents are featured on the track So Where did you hide? She was discovered by Anthony when he was working as a sound engineer at Jets Studios. Her soulful jazzy tones are put to good use in the track which was co-composed by her and Anthony. This track also received a great review in the UK magazine Computer Music.

Richard Dean

The never ending gabbling can be heard on The Gabbler where he covers 50 topics in less than 7 minutes! His comments can also be heard great effect in Lust. Richard Dean aka GroverJ and Apell are also known to create off the wall hip hop and rock parodies for your mutha!

John Dickens

John’s flamenco guitar skills can be heard on the tracks Exciting Soul Cock of the Stirring North and the remix ESCOTSN. The original track has been described as “a merging of flamenco, Middle Eastern/Indian influences, and the bagpipe” Smother.net (US)

Jason Demillo

NZ native, minor NZ ex-TV celebrity and 2007 Australian Idol top 100 contestant Jason Demillo is featured on 2 tracks on the latest album Reconstituted, Dubya and the catchy funk of So You Know.