Apples in Stereo Announce New Album, 'Travelers in Space and Time'

When the Apples in Stereo last released an album, frontman Robert Schneider included two short compositions using a new musical scale he had invented. On the band's upcoming seventh album, 'Travelers in Space and Time,' he goes one better and uses it on a full song.

The record is set to feature 16 tracks of what Schneider calls "retro-futuristic super-pop," full of piano, vocoder vocals and electronic sounds. It also features 'C.P.U.,' the first pop tune built around his non-Pythagorean musical scale.

"I wanted to make a futuristic pop record, to reach out to the kids of the future," Schneider said in a press release. "It is what I imagine their more highly-evolved pop might sound like: shiny soul music with robots and humans singing together, yet informed by the music of our time. So we are sending a pop music message through time, hoping they will decode it and be into it."

In addition to communicating with future generations, 'Travelers in Space and Time' is the first Apples in Stereo release with new drummer John Dufilho, singer of the Deathray Davies. Dufilho joins Bill Doss and John Ferguson on keyboards, John Hill on guitar and Eric Allen on bass.

Although the new record is the group's first since 'New Magnetic Wonder' in 2007, Schneider has hardly been dormant: last year he released a children's album, 'Robbert Bobbert and the Bubble Machine' and started the lo-fi psych-rock band Thee American Revolution with his brother-in-law. He also recently composed music based on prime numbers for a play written by the mathematician Andrew Granville and delivered the keynote address at the Big Sound Music Conference in Australia.

'Travelers in Space and Time' is the Apples in Stereo's second record for Elijah Wood's Simian Records, and will be released April 20 via Yep Roc/Simian/Elephant 6.