The Apples in Stereo's "C.P.U."

This morning I listened to the Apples in Stereo's Travellers in Space and Time, and I realized something about "C.P.U."  I'm pretty sure it uses the non-Pythagorean musical scale (which Robert Schneider talks about here), and because that's used alongside more standard musical intervals, there are some dissonances.  Those dissonances seem to musically represent the feeling that's in the first two lines: "You know what it's like when you're out of range of your satellite / You know you feel blue when you're out of sync with your CPU."  There's an off-kilter feeling that's common to both.

The Apples in Stereo's "Strawberryfire"

The first album I started listening to this year is a compilation album of the Apples in Stereo titled #1 Hits Explosion.   I think “Strawberryfire” (originally from Her Wallpaper Reverie) takes a few elements from the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.”  Obviously, both have “strawberry” in the titles (and in the lyrics), but they also share a musical element.  I’m not entirely sure how to describe it, but I think it’s some type of backwards percussion that generations a swooshing sound.  In “Strawberryfire,” it’s pretty noticeable after the second chorus (”Took a trip on a stereo song...”), at about 2:40.  I skipped around a bit in “Strawberry Fields Forever” to find the same effect, and - while there might be an earlier instance - it’s quite noticeable during “I mean it must be high or low” at about 1:27.

Originally, I was just going to write about how “Took a trip on a stereo song” is an appropriate lyric for a band with “stereo” in its name, but then I found that percussion thing, which I think is more interesting.

The Apples in Stereo's Electronic Projects for Musicians

I listened to the Apples in Stereo's Electronic Projects for Musicians this morning.  By the end of the album, I started to realize how appropriate their name is (or how appropriate their music is, in the event that their name was created first): most of the songs combine double-tracking (or triple-tracking) and extremely left and right panning.  So the stereo element is heavily emphasized in their songs, which is also reflected in their name.  I think this is mostly the case for the vocals (both lead and backing) and some of the guitar parts.  I'd have to listen to the album again in order to be more specific though.

I'm fairly certain that this stereo arrangement is featured on their other albums too, but, offhand, the only other song I can point to specifically is "The Afternoon" from The Discovery of a World inside the Moone.  There, the vocals are triple-tracked in left-center-right stereo.