Moogfest 2011Recap

Day 1: Matthew Dear, Mayer Hawthorne, Tangerine Dream, Holy F**k, Moby, LunzProject

Matthew Dear
Well, somebody has to go on first, right? The three-day Moogfest kicked off just after 5pm on Friday. Spread across more than a half-dozen venues throughout downtown Asheville NC, the event brings together a dizzying array of musical styles, including up-and-comers as well as legendary names. Many of the latter include artists one rarely sees on tour.

Matthew Dear is among the former. A youngish singer/musician, he spent most of his time onstage singing, but between songs he busied himself with the setting up and triggering of beats, loops and whatnot. Heavy on groove but light on lyrics, Dear’s music was built around those programmed pieces, and more often than not the band seemed to be following the electronics, rather than the other way ’round. At one point Dear picked up a black Les Paul, causing to me to mutter to myself, “Well, this could be cool.” But as best as I could tell, he’s from the Elvis school of guitar playing: other than a few random jabs, he didn’t seem to do much with the guitar.

As is typical for an opener, attendance was light, though the crowd grew steadily. Dear’s set took place at the Animoog Playground, a fancy name for “big outdoor parking lot.” The sound was good, and the band’s energy was there, but the weather was doom-laden. Grey and windy, the skies began to open up a bit, misting lightly upon the crowd. With temperatures starting under 50 and headed downward, there was plenty of incentive for people to move around. And they did, a bit. In total, a good opener that drew people in.

Mayer Hawthorne
One of the acts I specifically wanted to see, Detroit’s Mayer Hawthorne came out at 6:30pm for what was planned to be a one-hour set. By this time the Animoog Playground crowd had more than doubled in size, and darkness was quickly falling. The rain was also starting to pick up. Hawthorne and band took to the stage, and the singer joked that this weather was nothing: “It’s like this every fuckin’ day in Detroit,” he quipped.

As the band tore into their retro-soul set, the crowd reacted in kind. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people around me who seemed to already know the songs. Hawthorne’s second album How Do You Do had only been released a week or so before, but one could clearly see people mouthing along with the lyrics.

Hawthorne impressed by switching between keyboards, percussion and guitar throughout the set, and the band was super-tight. But as the rain increased in intensity, it became more of a distraction. But twenty minutes or so into the set, water could clearly be seen bouncing off of the keyboards and drums. Even before they started playing, the musicians were toweling down their instruments, gamely attempting to keep them dry. But by this point in the set, the stage was slick and everything was wet. Crew members brought towels and tarpaulins out and tried to cover whatever could be covered, and during a guitar solo Hawthorne existed stage right to dry off, while his bassist cowered stage right in a vain effort to stay (briefly) dry.

Despite all of this, the band had the audience in the palm of their hand. People were moving, digging it, and the crowd kept growing. And to watch the band, one would think they weren’t bothered at all by the pouring rain. Even though the stage has a top and fabric sides, this cold rain was coming down sideways. There wasn’t a dry spot onstage. And as it turned out, this must have been more of a problem than the performers left on. After finishing a song around the 45 minute mark – clearly not a set-ender – the band quickly exited the stage without a word. No goodbye, no nothing. This surprising turn of events marked the end of their set. Any band would be forgiven for throwing in the soggy towel under these conditions, but the abrupt manner in which it actually happened took everyone by surprise. People looked around at each other: “Are they finished?” Most shrugged and left for another venue when it was announced that Little Dragon – the next-scheduled act on that stage – had canceled due to “a band member’s illness.” For me – like so many others – it was time to head indoors for awhile.

Tangerine Dream
North American concert dates by this legendary outfit are a rarity, so I had marked this show down as do-not-miss. That it took place indoors in a seated venue made it even better: a quick six-block walk across downtown to the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium and a friendly security pat-down later, I was inside the venue. As with all of the Moogfest shows (save the separately-ticketed Brian Eno talk scheduled for Saturday), seating was general-admission, first-come-first-served. But having arrived fifteen or so minutes early, I had no problem finding a seat.

The stage was decorated with an assortment of synthesizers, both vintage and modern. A pair of wide-screen monitors were situated close to the front edge of the stage; each displayed a virtual synthesizer; one looked a bit like a typical (if slightly intimidating) “soft synth” and the other was a graphical representation of a modular synth, similar to an old telephone switchboard. (From my vantage point, neither seemed to do much of anything throughout the set, I must note.)

The six-piece band feature two older guys, one seated at a bank of keyboards and hidden behind sunglasses and a hat that made him look like a krautrock Charlie Rich or Leon Russell. The other stood at his keyboard racks, cloaked in a jacket and scarf. A slightly younger guy with a Strat-style guitar delivered David Gilmour-flavored licks that wove in and out of the songs.

Those songs – all wordless, mostly hook-free – had a feel halfway between soundtrack music and new age. In other words, they offered a good cross-section of what Tangerine Dream’s music has long been about. Songs tumbled into one another, rarely stopping completely to allow for crowd applause.

Half of the band were younger females. An energetic drummer played stand-up style behind a set of Roland v-drums, occasionally moving over to a set of acoustic percussion (congas, etc.) New age accoutrements such as rain sticks and whatnot were in ample supply. A woman at the back of the stage alternated between wind instruments, percussion, keyboards and other assorted instruments. Now and then a violinist appeared.

It must be said that the crowd reacted coolly to the set. While flawlessly performed, the fact that the music wasn’t high-energy, coupled with the lack of movement onstage (excepting the drummer) mean that it wasn’t the most exciting set. Other than the standing crowd in the VIP section up front (roughly 100 people), the crowd sat down after the first five minutes or so. At the start of the set, the hall was more than half-filled; as time wore on, more and more people left.

Which points out an inescapable fact about events such as these: under the best circumstances, fans will almost likely find that there are two must-see bands playing at the same time. So the odds of someone coning and staying for an entire set are greatly diminished, no matter how great the show. In the case of Tangerine Dream, the band’s set was slated to run two hours, making it one of the longest scheduled sets of the whole weekend.

Though I had planned to stay for the whole set, a friend suggested we head over and check out some of the bands playing next door at the cavernous Asheville Civic Center. Reluctantly admitting that I had pretty much heard what Tangerine Dream had on offer, I agreed and we exited.

Holy F**k
Viewed from a certain perspective, the music of Holy F**k and that of Tangerine Dream are opposite sides of the same coin. Where the German group uses synthesized sounds to create placid, dream soundscapes, the young quartet starts with similar elements – samples, loops and synthetically-generated aural textures – and ends up with something quite different.

Holy F**k’s music is twitchy, high-energy stuff, and onstage a pair of keyboardists…well, wait a moment: it may or may not be accurate to call them keyboardists. True, they have synthesizers in front of them, but at Moogfest, only rarely did they play them in anything approaching a typical manner. Instead, the instruments were treated more as sound generating machines, devices to be tweaked. The knobs and switches got more of a workout than did the black and white keys. A rhythm section ostensibly held down the backbeat, but in reality the loops did a lot the heavy lifting in that department.

Where Tangerine Dream would sculpt compositions around a sustained chord or chord sequence, Holy F**k would build their pieces around sounds. It’s more than a distinction without a difference: the end effect is miles away from the dreamy sounds of krautrock. Closer in many ways to rave-culture music, Holy F**k’s performance did veer occasionally toward melodicism. And the crowd – much younger and more animated than the Tangerine Dream audience – certainly dug it.

Moby
Some acts are associated with a particular time in history. Maybe they somehow perfectly encapsulate the zeitgeist of a given period, or maybe they’re so much a product of that time that their image is inextricably entwined with it. For me, such is the case with Moby. I nearly sat out the 90s from a pop culture standpoint, attending relatively few shows. Nonetheless, a few artists had such high profiles that one knew about them even without trying. Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Ricky Martin, EMF, Ice-T…Moby.

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Moby, and he delivered. Running about the stage, Moby switched between guitars, percussion and so forth while his band and a female vocalist kept things moving under, over and around him. Even if you never listened to his brand of relatively warm and humanistic techno (for lack of a more precise term) you’d find the songs familiar.

One slightly disconcerting quality to the show was found in the keyboard player. Situated at the backline of the stage setup and shrouded in darkness, this woman seemed – from my standpoint, at least – to be doing most of the musical work, a sort of woman-behind-the-curtain techno Wizardess of Oz. At times I couldn’t help but think to myself that had Moby, the female vocalist, drummer and bassist all left the stage, the sound coming through the speakers wouldn’t have changed all that much.

LunzProject
My familiarity with Hans-Joachim Roedelius comes chiefly from my knowledge of Cluster, the German ambient outfit that is in turn most well-known for having collaborated with Brian Eno. While many of the acts on the Moogfest lineup tend toward the high-energy techno end of things, I was more intrigued by the list of pioneering (read: older) acts scheduled to perform. Roedelius certainly falls into that category. Collaborating with Tim Story, Roedelius put on a very low-key performance at the tiny Diana Wortham Amphitheater, a venue that seats only a few hundred. A sit-down venue with fine acoustics, it’s the ideal setting for the sort of ambient washes of sound LunzProject brings.

The pieces were mostly soundscapes: Story played a number of the pieces on a vintage Memorymoog, the last of the analog beasts from Moog’s first era. A rarely-seen instrument, the Memorymoog is – in the right hands — capable of delivering staggeringly expressive textures. Contrasting with this rare beast, Story spent the rest of his time behind a Kurzweil K2500, a decidedly modern instrument. (Incidentally, Bob Moog had more to do with development of the latter than the former.) Meanwhile, Roedelius wordlessly tweaked some sound-generating equipment we couldn’t see (it was on a catering table) and occasionally played some spare yet precise lines on a grand piano.

Offstage where he couldn’t be seen, someone operated a laptop that controlled large projections that filled the back wall of the stage. Close-up shots of water emanating from a pipe, slow-moving tracking shots of an ascent inside a power grid…those sort of placid images floated across the screen. A few of the images seemed to be of local Asheville landmarks, so it may well be – I’m not sure about this – that the operator is a local visual artist. In any event, the visuals suited the sounds quite well.

As far away from the raving sounds of many Moogfest headliners, the LunzProject performance was a highly enjoyable experience. In terms of the material, the pieces in the duo’s set most closely resembled the kind of things one hears on Cluster’s albums. The set was warmly (even a bit reverentially) received by the intimate crowd, and the performers were clearly moved by the reception they received.

For this concertgoer, that wrapped up Friday’s program. With LunzProject ending at 12:30, I called it a night. Other stages would remain active until 2:30am. But Saturday would be a full day for me, with events scheduled from 2pm to 2:30am.

Day 2: Brian Eno's "Illustrated Talk," Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Terry & Gyan Riley, The Flaming Lips, Amon Tobin: ISAM, Moon Duo, Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble

Brian Eno’s “Illustrated Talk” was a separately-ticketed event; Moogfest pass holders got first dibs on tickets (and a reduced price). Clearly hoping to avoid recriminations later, the promoters went to great lengths to let people know that Eno would not be playing music at this event (nor at his also-separately-ticketed “77 Million Paintings” installation at the YMI).

No matter: music or no, the Eno event was worth whatever pricetag AC Entertainment hung on it. Dressed “business casual,” the unassuming Eno took to the stage right on time (after a brief intro by AC head Ashley Capps, clearly jazzed at the opportunity to introduce a hero of his). Eno was surprisingly self-effacing, quickly making it clear why pretty much anyone who’s ever worked with him (in his capacities as producer and/or collaborator) has nothing but praise for the man.

For someone so closely associated with technology and experimentation, Eno is refreshingly humanistic in his approach and worldview. At the risk of inaccurately paraphrasing him – Eno is nothing if not precisely articulate, though he’d almost certainly argue otherwise – technology is merely a tool of creative expression. Far from being a technocrat, Eno is a champion of the creative process, and seems to believe that the potential to create great things lies within everyone.

Throughout his two-hour talk, Eno presented overhead transparencies featuring endearingly crude hand drawings. These helped reinforce the points he was making, and did so in the most unpretentious manner possible. After the talk, I heard or read (I can’t recall which: so much info had found its way into my head, I was happily suffering overload) someone suggest that Eno’s presentation was professorial. Nothing could be farther from the truth: like his music, the talk was warm and wholly human-centered.

Eno has a knack for demystifying things that would otherwise seem complicated. With the aid of another illustration, he gave a quick explanation of the concept/mechanics behind Terry Riley’s “In C,” elucidating the piece in a concise manner. Eno explained why no two performances of “In C” are ever the same, and used that idea to move into a discussion of the relationship(s) between composer, performer and the audience.

With excellent delivery and timing, Eno showed that he has quite a sharp sense of humor, often making little jokey asides at his own expense. And he made a point of offering a pair of endorsements: one for local Asheville record shop Harvest Records (paraphrase: “They don’t stock all records, just the good ones”) and another for – of all things — a hardcore pornography site. Of the latter, it was truly to make a valid point about creativity.

I have a stack of Eno records – including his 1970s “pop trilogy,” some of the ambient discs, and his collaborations with Robert Fripp – and I’ve enjoyed them for years now. But after hearing and seeing Eno talk, I am sure that I will hear all of his work in a substantially different way. Moogfest may have been (nominally) a music festival, but Eno’s “Illustrated Talk” was a major highlight.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius
Approaching this performance, I wondered if it would be little more than an encore of the previous day’s LunzProject set by Roedelius with Tim Story. The venue – the intimate and ever-so-slightly hoity-toity Diana Wortham Theatre – was the same, and when I entered and took my seat, I found a similar stage setup: a table with some electronics on it, and a grand piano. The projected background image was the same as well. Oh, well, I thought. If it is the same, that’s okay, as I didn’t get enough rest last night.

When Roedelius came onstage, he was visibly taken aback at the size of the crowd, and our enthusiastic reaction to him. He made reference to the nearby “77 Million Paintings” installation by his friend and frequent collaborator Brian Eno, and told us that today was his 77th birthday. He promised us something special to commemorate the day.

Most of his set involved light melodies played on the piano, the works were pop-song in length and melodic, sort of on the accessible end of jazz, with a bit of new age and classical flavor. Some evoked melancholy, sadness and/or reverie; others were decidedly more sprightly and upbeat. Long, sustained notes on the piano were often allowed to decay into silence, creating an atmosphere not unlike that on “Steal Away” from the 1980 Brian Eno/Harold Budd collaboration Ambient 2 / The Plateaux of Mirrror. Contemplative, transcendent, meditative stuff.

Every now and then during the hour-long set Roedelius would move to the table of electronics, where he had (among other devices) a boombox. In real-time, he would manipulate the devices to create an on-the-fly sound collage. One of these included a bit of Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The most unusual aural collage – his final number before an insisted-upon encore – included a relatively long snippet of choral/opera music and excerpt from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

After a rousing, extended and enthusiastic round of applause – one that clearly moved Roedelius – the audience spontaneously launched into a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” Roedelius concluded his time onstage with a brief spoken tribute to the festival’s namesake, the late Dr. Robert Moog. Roedelius made it plain that he owed much to Moog and his synthesizers, Roedelius having started (like Eno) as a non-musician working with synths. It was, he explained, the creative feedback he got working with these machines that led Roedelius to learn more conventional playing on the piano.

Terry & Gyan Riley
I had high hopes for this one, but metaphorical clouds loomed on the horizon. Near the tail-end of Eno’s “Illustrated Talk,” Brian Eno fretted aloud that his question-and-answer time might impinge on the setup and sound check for Terry Riley and his son, guitarist Gyan Riley. From my standpoint, this didn’t seem a serious concern: Eno was scheduled until 4:30pm, and hadn’t run overtime. The Rileys were slated to take the stage at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at 6:30.

So when Eno ended, I hoofed across town to see and hear Roedelius’ hour-long 5pm set (see above), knowing I’d have ample time to get back to the Thomas Wolfe in time for Terry Riley. When I arrived, the ushers were holding the audience back in the lobby. 6:30 came and went, and after poking his head into the auditorium, an usher told me, “I don’t know what’s taking so long. They’ve been setting up for hours, and they’re still doing sound check. And…there’s only a piano and a guitar!” Eventually we were let in.

Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to “get” it. And I write those words without a hint of sarcasm: I’ve only begun to listen to jazz, for example, in the last few years, and while I love a lot of it, I don’t understand it in the way that I connect with, say, Pink Floyd or the Beatles. So while the first number that Riley & Riley did was pleasing and interesting enough, the set soon thereafter took a detour into what I can only describe as a sort of dada deconstruction of the blues. The elder Riley played some semi-dissonant lines on his digital Korg, while Gyan scraped at – as opposed to played in a conventional manner — the guitar. When the chorus (or something approximating one) would come around, the chord sequence followed a blues pattern, but Terry Riley seemed to be (intentionally, mind you) singing in another key. All this was lost on me.

Gyan Riley showed himself to be a fine and expressive player, most notably when using an acoustic and playing Spanish-style runs. These highlights, ultimately, were too far and in-between to hold the attention of the seated (yet clearly restless) audience.

With all due respect — and nonetheless I count myself lucky to have seen Riley in performance – this show reminded me of how many people (though not me) feel about the work of Yoko Ono. With each song, more and more of the audience took their leave. Few, if any, entered to take their place. At one point, my friend suggested to me, “How about one more song, and then we go?” I replied, “Okay, unless Terry Riley starts singing again.” He did, and we ducked out, heading for the outdoor spectacle that is a Flaming Lips performance.

The Flaming Lips
Here’s the thing about the Flaming Lips: it’s all about the spectacle. Whether you like their music or not is almost, in some ways, beside the point. Saying that a given artist’s performances are “equal parts sound and spectacle” makes for a nice bit of alliteration, but when it comes to the Flips, it’s way more about the show. And I say this as a major fan of their music: for my money, 1999’s The Soft Bulletin was one of the best two albums of that decade (the other was OK Computer; sorry, Nirvana). And while Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) and 2006’s At War With the Mystics had their share of amazing moments, the group’s output has been spotty since then. The Pink Floyd rethink album was better in concept than execution, and while Embryonic delivered the expected amount of weirdness, it was short on, y’know, actual tunes.

None of which matters a whit when one is presented with the opportunity to witness the Flaming Lips live onstage. Frontman/ringmaster Wayne Coyne is roughly my age (Michael Ivins and Steven Drozd are, I think, a bit younger) and thus came of age as a rock fan in the era when spectacle was highly revered. Love or hate KISS, Alice Cooper, Elton John or even Emerson, Lake and Palmer, they and their contemporaries put on shows that were a feast for the eyes (and, um, head). This sort of stuff clearly influenced the Flaming Lips: they seem committed to the idea that a rock concert can still be An Event.

And indeed it can be. Most acts who are down with the idea of a visual extravaganza being a part of their show could only hope for a finale that equals the opening (forget about the ending!) of a Flaming Lips show. Long on gimmicks, the Lips have a number of tricks in their bag that anyone who’s seen them before will recognize. But somehow their shtick doesn’t get old: when Wayne gets into his “space bubble” and surfs over the crowd as the show opens, you may have seen it all before, but it’s every bit as wonderful as the first time you witnessed it (the Moogfest show was my third Flaming Lips concert). The crowd gets sprayed with tons of confetti. Glow sticks fly about. Balloons of every size and color bounce atop the heads of the concertgoers, and some of them are filled with even more confetti. Wayne’s bullhorn dispenses fog. And even the most jaded concertgoer has a huge, shit-eating grin pasted on their face. A Flaming Lips show is almost childlike in its sense of wonder: hey, let’s make this as cool as we possibly can!

There’s a clear dichotomy between the live and studio Flaming Lips, even though they’re the same people. The roles are different. Though brought into the group as a drummer, Drozd plays all the keyboard and most of the guitar parts onstage. In the studio, he plays pretty much all the instruments and writes the music. Coyne sings both onstage and in the studio, and he writes most of the lyrics. Onstage he plays a bit of guitar, but mostly busies himself with bullhorns, confetti cannons and endless, rambling raps to the audience between songs. Michael Ivins plays the bass sitting down in concert; in the studio, he sits in the control room, serving as the band’s engineer, and is a major architect of the group’s expansive, deeply textured sound (Drozd plays a lot of the bass parts on records). Kliph Spurlock used to be a roadie, then an honorary drummer. Now he’s a full member and the official (onstage, at least) drummer. A fifth member whom I didn’t recognize handles lead guitar parts.

Serving up a nice mix of old and new at Moogfest, the Flaming Lips went all the way back to 1993 and pulled out “She Don’t Use Jelly,” one of the closest things they’ve ever had to a mainstream hit single. A number of relatively monotonous tunes were peppered into the set, but there was so much going on visually that it didn’t matter much. In honor of Bob Moog, the group trotted out Emerson Lake and Palmer’s “Lucky Man,” a song famous in part for its memorable Moog solo. Drozd played an extended version of the solo, but used a more modern instrument at the show.

Coyne’s between-song monologues could be tiresome for someone who came only for the music; occasionally the gaps between tunes did get a bit longish But to be fair, reloading all those confetti cannons takes time. But Wayne always worked hard to keep the crowd engaged, with nutty/edgy little asides like the one in which he insisted that he had just spoken with Asheville mayor Terry Bellamy backstage, and that she had given her blessing to the crowd smoking pot during the show.

No, the Flips didn’t perform their new “six hour song” or (shudder) their “twenty-four hour song,” but in the time allotted, they provided more entertainment than one could reasonably expect in any span of time. Who knows: The Flaming Lips may well have their best years musically yet ahead of them, but in the meantime, they still – as ever – put on a hell of a show.

Amon Tobin: ISAM
Topping a Flaming Lips show is a tall feat, and I cannot report that Amon Tobin’s ISAM did so. But it was a tour-de-force of sorts. Tobin’s stage set is a high-tech stack of kiddie ABC blocks, all turned at 45° angles, forming a large screen of sorts. Near the center of one of these blocks is a larger block, and inside that is Tobin himself. Using a set of high-definition projectors, an endless array of visual images are projected upon this three-dimensional canvas. The images throb, melt, spin, undulate and generally move every way you could imagine (and quite a few you probably couldn’t imagine). It’s all very creative stuff, and a real assault on the senses.

After five minutes or so of being very impressed, I did began to wonder if Tobin could sustain the crowd’s interest for a full 75 minutes. Well, he did. The images never seemed to circle back upon themselves, and just when you’d think you’d seen it all, Tobin would pull out something else to dazzle your eyes.

Ears, not so much. The music was more a series of bass bombs and sound effects than anything with an actual melody, and while the visuals remained arresting the entire show, I eventually grew tired of the audio portion of Tobin’s performance. Endeavoring to avoid a headache that would preclude my enjoyment of the rest of the evening – two shows yet to go! – I made my exit.

Moon Duo
Allmusic.com tells us that Moon Duo are influenced by – among others – Suicide, a duo also on the Moogfest lineup (I didn’t see ‘em). I don’t hear it. To my ears, the pair – Erik “Ripley” Johnson of Wooden Shjips on guitar and Sanae Yamada on keys – draw more from the psychedelic end of 1960s garage, with a sound not miles removed from that of Black Angels and (coincidentally) Black Mountain. Johnson, looking a lot like a mid-70s Howard Kaylan (Turtles/Flo & Eddie) churned out appealingly grungy licks on his Gibson SG, while Yamada evoked Piper at the Gates of Dawn organ work of Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright. Sequenced beats – sometimes used on more than one song – held down the bottom, but Moon Duo’s delivery nonetheless remained quite organic. Within the confines of the at-capacity Asheville Music Hall, Moon Duo whipped the crowd into a frenzy, and kept them there. A dizzying synthesis of throbbing krautrock and modern dance beats with a dollop of rock sensibility atop it all, Moon Duo delivered an impressive set.

Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble
I had tentative plans to interview this German trio during Moogfest, but our schedules didn’t permit it. Still, I had the chance to spend some quality time with their debut CD Mr. Machine in advance of their late-night performance at the Asheville Music Hall. That experience didn’t prepare me for their show, however. While the album is built around classical/chamber instrumentation plus analog synths, creating in the process a jazz-influenced mix that’s tough to pin down, onstage it was much more of a dance/club sort of vibe.

Looking very much like The Man-Machine-era Kraftwerk (coincidence?), the trio had their equipment set up at the stage’s front edge, allowing (no, encouraging) communion with the audience. All in all, a fun set, but I preferred their album better. With the clock indicating well past 2am, I headed home for the night. After all, I had five more bands to see and hear on Sunday.

Note: By all accounts, Stick Men and The Adrian Belew Power Trio put on phenomenal shows that I missed. I saw them a few weeks earlier, and interviewed them. That story is here.

Day 3: The Drums, M83, Neon Indian, Passion Pit, Ford & Lopatin

Sunday was the last of the three-day Moogfest. I kept my plans fluid until the last possible moment, not deciding which acts to see until minutes before I made the (five-minute) drive downtown. I predicted – accurately, as it turned out – that attendance for these shows would be a bit lighter than Saturday’s. Some people purchased single-day passes for Friday and/or Saturday, and some out-of-towners had to head home for work or school. Unlike some Asheville-based festivals (Bele Chere, for example), adult beverages were still for sale during the Sunday part of the fest. Always a good thing, that.

The Drums
Shortly before I left home, my son called me from Harvest Records to recommend I see The Drums at their 6:30pm set at the Thomas Wolfe. As he spoke, I could hear them in the background, doing an in-store. I took his advice — he does know what I like – and checked them out.

The Drums are a young band; none of them looked to be much over 21. This fact is noteworthy mainly because their music betrays clear influences of such bands as The Smiths (who operated 1982-1987) and Echo & the Bunnymen (who got their start even earlier, and enjoyed an 80s heyday). They put on an energetic set of catchy music, but suffered attendance-wise by being scheduled concurrently with M83, onstage at the adjacent Asheville Civic Center. Had this not been the case, I would have stayed for their entire set. Alas, after a half-dozen tunes, I decided to follow the herd and check out M83 as well.

M83
With a set decorated with vertical columns of might — sort of an inverted take on Radiohead’s 2008 stage setup – M83 put on another high-energy set. The large Civic Center was the ideal venue for this music, as it allowed those so inclined to take to the floor and undulate as the spirit moved them. Honestly, nothing about their music stuck in my mind long after the show ended, but neither did I actively dislike it.

Neon Indian
I was more familiar with the music of Neon Indian going in, having reviewed Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms a year ago (my son had turned me onto them, as well). For this show, a fairly large band – six or so musicians – played the multi-layered music that incorporated samples, loops and plenty of actual live musical performance. A highlight was the appearance of a guest musician who came out to play a lovely and (no easy thing) expert Theremin solo.

Passion Pit
With time to spare before the 10pm Ford & Lopatin show at the Asheville Music Hall, I wandered over to the Animoog Playground (parking lot) to check out Passion Pit. Well, honestly, I went there to get a best-I’ve-ever-tasted felafel from Suzy Phillips’ Gypsy Queen Street Food truck, but as my dumb luck would have it, Passion Pit was also really good. Lead vocalist Michael Angelakos sounds a lot like a female singer whose name I can’t recall, but that voice worked quite well, set in relief against the sounds the band was making. Lot of traditional keyboard sounds led Passion Pit’s highly melodic, hook-laden songs. Despite the fact that this was an outdoor venue on a chilly Sunday night, the crowd swelled and the band was very well-received. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Passion Pit returning to Asheville soon for a gig at, say, the Orange Peel.

Ford & Lopatin
Next, I headed to the tiny Asheville Music Hall for my final Moogfest show, the synthesizer duo of Ford & Lopatin. As the Moogfest website had described their music using words like “dreamier” and “blip and shimmer” I went expecting synthy sounds that leaned toward the chillwave end of things. Not, I reasoned, a bad way to end my 2011 Moogfest experience. Instead, it was a rather uptempo, bass-bomb filled electronica experience. Quite good for what it was, just unexpected.

Some Final Thoughts on Moogfest 2011

In the run-up to the event, I had some concerns that Moogfest wasn’t all that well organized. Email alerts were spotty and infrequent: I’d heard from friends who had received updates, but I didn’t get them (there was a list of advance ticket buyers, and I even contacted – and received confirmation from – the organizers to make sure I was on the list.

But once I arrived at the festival, I found it to be a model of efficiency. Long lines always moved smoothly, and those tasked with security duties seemed to go out of their way to maintain a cheery, friendly disposition. I would later hear that APD made “several” arrests, but in and between my 20+ shows, I saw very little – if any — of what most would consider bad behavior. Unlike Bonnaroo 2007 – where I saw a guy passed out and puke-stained in a ditch before the first day’s music even started – Moogfest was relatively incident-free.

I don’t know the particulars of the organizers’ arrangement with the city of Asheville, but I should comment on what to me was a stroke of brilliance on someone’s part. Anyone who’s attended pretty much any music festival knows that there is a community of food vendors that shows up at most of these events. You know: the Belgian Waffle guy, the turkey leg people, and so on. Fair enough: they need to make a living, too, and they provide a real service.

But since Moogfest takes place at six venues scattered across downtown Asheville, concertgoers pass by any number of brick-and-mortar establishments ready to serve them. Whether by design or not, the Moogfest approach – no food vendors except the Civic Center counters and three locally owned food trucks in the Animoog Playground – meant that Moogfest was good for Asheville business overall, not just for the organizers. Other festival organizers could learn a thing or two by studying Moogfest 2011. And of course the ticket price – I paid $157.50 for my advance purchase of a three-day pass — provided amazing value for the money. Anyone who bought a ticket and didn’t think it was a good deal, well I’d say they didn’t try hard enough. I’m looking forward to next year’s festival.

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