Music / Apollo 440

Left to right: Harry K, Howard Gray, Noko, Trevor Gray (front) and Ian Hoxley (blue shirt)

Apollo 440 are a British electronic rock band founded in 1990. Their name is derived from the Greek god Apollo, along with the standard tuning pitch A440 (the A note played at 440 hz), and the sound sampler known as the Studio 440.

The band reached the record charts in 1997 with the singles "Krupa" and "Ain't Talking 'bout Dub" while their biggest hit came in 1999 with "Stop the Rock'', considered to be the band's Signature Song.

Apollo 440 has contributed to the soundtrack of various films and video games including Charlie's Angels (2000), EuroTrip, and Rapid Racer. They have also collaborated with various other artists, including Jeff Beck and Jean-Michel Jarre.

Discography:

• Millenium Fever (1994)
• Electro Glide in Blue (1997)
• Gettin' High on Your Own Supply (1999)
• Dude Descending a Staircase (2003)
• The Future's What It Used to Be (2012)

Stop the tropes, can't stop the tropes:

• Alliterative Title: "Astral America", "Bulletproof Blues", and "Rope, Rapture and the Rising Sun".
• Anti-Escapism Aesop: "High On Your Own Supply" is about the destruction that idealistic fantasies and self-indulgence cause to the individual.
• Broken Record:
  • "Stop the Rock" does this for most of the lyrics:
    Stop. The rock. Can't stop the rock, you can't stop. The rock. Can't stop the rock...
  • "Altamont Super-Highway Revisited", which consists of the repeated lyrics "One! One! One! One-one-one-one-one!" to punctuate the rhythm.
• Car Song: Several songs are about cars, such as "Start the Car", "Cold Rock the Mic" and "Hold The Brakes".
• Disco Sucks: Dude Descending a Staircase has a song called "Disco Sucks". The singer is all dressed up for the club, but the DJ sucks, he can't dance, the ladies aren't interested, it's too cold outside to leave, and the one woman who catches his eye turns out to be a man. And yet, he still loves the actual music and hates himself for it.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: One of the tracks on Millennium Fever is an electronic cover of the Blue Öyster Cult song of this name.
• Epic Instrumental Opener: Most of Apollo 440's songs don't begin their lyrics for at least a minute. Examples include "High On Your Own Supply", "Electro Glide In Blue", and "Millennium Fever".
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: Gettin' High On Your Own Supply is named after this expression, with the titular song “High On Your Own Supply” using it as a metaphor for Sanity Slippage.
• Ghost in the Machine: Inverted with the title of the track "Machine in the Ghost".
• Gratuitous Spanish: "Carrera Rapida" is Spanish for "the fast race". The lyrical version featured on the album Electro Glide In Blue includes Spanish words and phrases such as "amigo", "pescado" and "hasta la vista".
• Koan: "Fuzzy Logic" includes an audio clip of author Robert Anton Wilson describing a Buddhist kōan, said to be a simulation of enlightenment.
  You sit down, as long as you can, and think of as many aspects of the answer to the question, "Why am I sitting here doing this exercise?"
• Human Popsicle: The subject of "Liquid Cool", about using cryogenic preservation to reach the far future.
• Intercourse with You: Done in "Stop the Rock", with the repeated line "Let's get down and dirty, babe".
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Make My Dreams Come True", an optimistic-sounding song about the singer's desire to be beaten to death.
• Mortality Gray Area: "Liquid Cool" states that a person who is frozen in cryogenic preservation is said to be neither alive nor dead, but in a third state known as biostasis.
• Non-Appearing Title: “Electro Glide In Blue”, “Lost in Space (Theme)”, “Electronic Civil Disobedience”, “Diamonds In The Sidewalk”, and “Bulletproof Blues” don't have their titles in their lyrics.
• One-Woman Wail:
  • “Christiane” combines this with vaguely foreign-sounding, wordless vocals.
  • “High On Your Own Supply” has one as a bridge, after the first chorus.
  • “Stealth Mass in F#m” uses sad-sounding, ethereal one-woman wails for much of the song.
• One-Woman Song: “Christiane” has a woman's name as the title, though it is an mainly an instrumental.
• The Perfect Crime: Gettin' High On Your Own Supply has an instrumental track with this title.
• The Promised Land: Mentioned in "Bulletproof Blues", with the line "Take me to the promised land, take me girl and hold my hand".
• Protest Song: “Electronic Civil Disobedience” invites people to stand up and occupy the streets, to get "down with the man".
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "Stop the Rock" repeatedly states the title in this manner: "Stop. The rock. Can't stop the rock."
• Sanity Slippage Song: "High On Your Own Supply" is a song about losing self-control and respect, with drug metaphors as well.
• Scatting: In "1,2,3,4", from Dude Descending A Staircase, "bam-bam-bam, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam" is repeatedly used.
• Second-Person Narration: "High On Your Own Supply" is sung in the second person, as a Sanity Slippage Song.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title and cover art of Dude Descending A Staircase is one to Marcel Duchamp’s painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.
  • Gettin’ High On Your Own Supply has a title and song named after a line from Scarface, advising drug dealer Tony Montana "Don't get high on your own supply", meaning to not use his own product.
  • Electro Glide in Blue is named after the film Electra Glide in Blue.
  • “Stadium Parking Lot” includes the lyrics “Back from the land that time forgot!”
  • “Stop The Rock” has the line “Dancing like Madonna, into the grooving”.
  • "High On Your Own Supply" mentions "You're no Captain Scarlet, you're not indestructible".
• The Singularity: The theme of "Omega Point", which describes the titular goal as gaining "control of all matter and forces".
• Something Blues: “Bulletproof Blues” is named as if it were a blues song.
• Song Style Shift: "Fuzzy Logic" starts out as slow-paced, before switching to a more typical electronic rock style at 3:37.
• Spoken Word in Music:
  • The lyrics of “Diamonds In The Sidewalk” are a recording from Jack Kerouac, reciting the 228th chorus of his poem "Mexico City Blues".
  • “Love Is Evil” uses clips from a speech by philosopher Slavov Žižek.
  • “Fuzzy Logic” begins with Robert Anton Wilson describing an exercise taught by a Buddhist monk, as described in one of Aleister Crowley's books.
• Voice Clip Song: "Lost in Space (Theme)" consists of quotes from the movie of the same name.

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