Over the past week, the streets of downtown Durham were abuzz with thousands of people parading around with colored bracelets adorned with the letter “M.” The sounds of electronic music could be heard from the bottom of Blackwell Street to the parking lot of the Motorco Music Hall, where the soundstage garnered massive crowds night after night.
This is the essence of Moogfest, the Triangle’s most anticipated music festival that took place May 19-22 in the heart of downtown Durham. I was lucky enough this year to experience the strange wonder of the event, ‘strange’ being the key word. Moogfest is a music festival like no other, perhaps, in a class of its own.
“What I love [about Moogfest] is all these people who are as into synths as I am coming together in one place and kind of geeking out,” said Michael Ashton, senior firmware engineer with Moog Music. Ashton spoke at his very own event, “How to build your own synth for fun (if not for profit).” The event took place in the Full Frame Theater, which throughout the weekend, hosted a number of other D.I.Y.-centric and various other workshops. While this was the only event that Ashton was speaking at, he spoke of a fondness for the synth-enthusiast, creative culture of Moogfest.
Ashton likely shares these values with many Moogfest attendees — a passion for synths and a desire to share. One might assume that a “normal” music festival would be packed with 20-something college students and graduates, ready to blow their money on a few great concerts and some overpriced, picturesque food truck confections. Perhaps this assumption is correct but, again, Moogfest isn’t your typical festival.
During my stay, I noticed families, students and grown adults all interacting, enjoying the festivities. Ages ranged anywhere from 17 to the late 50s. Different races, genders and background came together in support of music. For the hardcore synth enthusiasts, location was no issue either. Two such attendees that I spoke to had even come all the way from San Francisco, California to enjoy the workshops and concerts of Moogfest.
One preliminary, somewhat misleading, aspect of Moogfest is the concerts. Yes, like any music festival Moogfest had concerts that attracted a great number of people. Two such concerts were Talib Kweli, a legendary hip-hop artist and producer, and Animal Collective. With massive crowds packed into the modest-sized parking lot of the Motorco, incredible stage effects and fairly popular music, it’s easy to see how these concerts might seem like the main heart of Moogfest at a first glance. Even surprise guest comedian Hannibal Buress, who appeared briefly before Talib Kweli, could tell the concerts were a small fraction of all the massive festival.
“Moogfest is a weird festival,” Buress said. “I’ve been to a lot of festivals, but none of them were like this one.”
A concert more in character with the spirit of Moogfest was the tribute to Jean Jacques Perrey, performed and orchestrated by the Ondioline Orchestra. The orchestra, which featured Wally De Backer (commonly known as “Gotye”), was both incredibly intimate and exceedingly beautiful, all while maintaining an air of erratic absurdity. Performed on a variety of instruments, but most importantly the synth-based Ondioline, the tribute was nothing short of bizarre. While there were notably less attendees than at Talib Kweli or Animal Collective, the applause after each song was thunderous while the theater itself was packed to the point of audience members sitting on the orchestra pit.
Part of what makes Moogfest distinct comes from the installations set in public places throughout the festival.Particularly, it is not just their visibility, but the fact that they are run by independent organizations that operate alongside the festival. One popular installation was “Ouroborium,” a nine-person operated, collaborative instrument that sat in full view of passersby under a black and white polyhedral dome. Available to interact with for those who signed up in advance, this installation was designed and promoted by Found Sound Nation, and was based on themes of individual protest brought by each attendee when working in conjunction to operate the instrument. This particular installation was new to the festival, having debuted at a TED talk earlier in 2017.
A similar exhibit, “Supercollider,” sat permanently in the lobby of the Carolina Theater. Owned and operated by Scott Lindroth, a professor of music composition at Duke University, Supercollider was audible from across the lobby before it could be spotted. At first, it sounded like a series of random sounding chimes. On closer inspection, the installation actually was a series of scrap metal pieces suspended from framework that were struck at very precise times, as dictated by a program processed through an Arduino miniature computation machine. If that sounds complex, that’s because it is; as Lindroth explained, the program is carefully scripted to execute the chimes in a way that mimics the flashing patterns of fireflies, thereby exploring music through patterns in nature.
Another installation, sat not 20 or so feet away from the Ouroborium, was the Dream Wanderer’s Mobile Virtual Reality Gallery, situated inside a decorated bus. This exhibit, run by Kyle Marler of Flatsitter, explored art through technology. The piece was called “Lily Dale” and, as Marler put it, it’s about a small town in west New York of the same name, where death is believed to be a fiction and its residents can talk to the dead. Certainly a more avant-garde and unique experience within the festival, Marler explains that the piece is also an exploration of spirituality and mysticism.
“I think everybody at Moogfest is kind of looking for a sort of a challenging, or avant-garde maybe, art experience or experience with technology,” Marler said.
Another installation, provided by legendary artist Michael Stipe, shared this idea. Stipe’s installation was a five-minute track composed over a silent video of artist Jeremy Ayers dancing. The piece marks his first ever venture as a solo artist, and was on repeat for hours at a time in the American Underground building storefront. During Stipe’s conversation panel, he talked briefly about the piece, explaining that it was an exploration of music and motion through technology. The installation was fittingly titled “Jeremy Dance,” and was on display through the windows and speakers of the building storefront.
While these installations help to put a picture to the spirit and feeling of Moogfest, they’re only a portion of what makes it feel so magical. According to the two attendees from San Francisco previously mentioned, Siegfried Bilstein and Kevin Kyyro, the festival achieves this spirit in a variety of ways.
“If it was only the music, it would be like any other music festival,” Bilstein said.
“And if it was only like, synth workshops, I probably wouldn’t fly out to Durham for a bunch of classes I would usually do on YouTube anyway,” added Kyyro with a laugh.
The two agreed that the concerts, the workshops and the installations were all great on their own. As Bilstein put it, “it’s really the whole package.” Moogfest is the sensation of all of these things carefully and passionately blended together. It’s the people, the concerts, and the festival itself all crammed into one place that makes it feel so cohesive, and thus truly creating the magic of Moogfest.
John Drake, a musician and synthesizer builder under the name of Suit & Tie Guy, familiarizes Moogfest attendees with the Moog IIIC Modular system on Friday, May 19, 2017. Several Moog products were available for purchase at the Moog Pop-Up Factory at Moogfest.
