Music, The Features, We Love Music

We Love Music: Moogfest Pt. 3 (Asheville, NC–4/25/14)

Giorgio Moroder speaks at a panel (Photo courtesy Moogfest)

Giorgio Moroder speaks at a panel (Photo courtesy Moogfest)

Although Moogfest ran for five days, I only truly availed myself of three of them. Sunday’s program, it should be noted, did not run late into the night as did the other days.

On Friday, April 25, the big draw to the show as legendary producer Giorgo Moroder. The 74-year-old Italian synthgod is still working hard, and he was scheduled to make three appearances at Moogfest on Friday–on two panels and one performance.

Unfortunately for me, he didn’t make the panel I caught. It actually was a film and accompanying discussion. Moogfest has within in a small “film festival” as well, screening various Moog-related films around town, and Friday afternoon the Orange Peel screened Scarface. All of the songs sung by Debbie Harry or Elizabeth Daily or others in Scarface were written and produced by Moroder, and he was one of the musical arrangers as well. So the idea was to watch Scarface and then discuss the importance of the soundtrack and score to the film. We received a report, however, that Moroder wasn’t feeling well and skipped the panel in to keep up his strength for his DJ gig that night. So we’ll get back to him in a bit.

Other than Giorgio Moroder, the big draw for Friday was two performances by Kraftwerk. The German quartet put up two shows back to back at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, and they both went very well. I caught the first show, which was very good indeed. Doing so compensated somewhat for the fact that I had to miss them at the 9:30 Club two weeks earlier.

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Music, The Features, We Love Music

We Love Music: Moogfest Pt. 1 (Asheville, NC–4/23/14)

Thundercat DJs the roof of the Aloft Hotel (Photo courtesy Moogfest)

Thundercat DJs the roof of the Aloft Hotel (Photo courtesy Moogfest)

I’ve always said that, compared to New York, D.C. is a small, sleepy Southern city. It was interesting then last week to somewhat put my money where my mouth is, and go to Asheville, N.C., a truly small Southern city, to attend Moogfest, the annual festival dedicated to the sounds of the synthesizer, and Moog devices in particular.

For five days, the city of Asheville is anything but sleepy, however, as visitors and residents alike rise at 9 a.m. for lectures, insights, demonstrations, presentations and performances, only to stay out until 2 a.m. every night, dancing their hearts out to the likes of Flying Lotus and Dan Deacon.

For my part, I arrived on Wednesday, April 23, the first day, and journeyed to city center, the location of the Aloft Hotel, a Moogfest sponsor. The hotel hosted the Moogfest Urban Art Installation Activation, a gallery featuring 10 large-scale installations designed to enhance the experience of an audience by engaging multimedia and multi-sensory experiences of sound, structure, light and form.

I headed to the roof for an opening party DJ’ed by Thundercat, a recording artist on Brainfeeder who played at our own U Street Music Hall as recently as last Nov. 26.

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