This was the final MoogFest held in Asheville, which is sad because Asheville was home to the late music innovator, Bob Moog, inventor of the famous Moog Synthesizer. The Moog factory is still here, and every Moog instrument—synthesizer, theremin, and effects pedal—is designed and manufactured right here. So even though this lineup was weak compared to the previous festivals, I went anyway, and did get to see some cool performances that I would never have seen otherwise.
MoogFest is a showcase of electronic music, and has performers from many genres, everything from prog to rap to new wave to DJs. It is really a big celebration of creativity and technology in music. In addition to performances, there were workshops and discussions and exhibits, everything to make a music-nerd’s heart skip beats.
So here are the acts that I recall seeing:
- Santigold
- Thomas Dolby
- Primus (in 3-D)
- Miike Snow
- Morton Subotnick
- Squarepusher
- Divine Fits
- Orbital
- Four Tet
Primus was disappointing. I’m not a Primus fan, but had hoped for a cool show based upon all the hype, but they were barely mediocre. The high points were definitely Santigold, Thomas Dolby, Divine Fits, Miike Snow, and Morton Subotnick. They were all excellent.
I was only able to find a few setlists online, so here they are.
Santigold:
- GO!
- L.E.S. Artistes
- Lights Out
- Say Aha
- Get It Up
- Disparate Youth
- Anne
- The Keepers
- Creator
- Fame
- Shove It
- Freak Like Me
- Big Mouth
Primus:
- Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers
- Prelude to a Crawl
- Last Salmon Man
- Southbound Pachyderm
- Eternal Consumption Engine
- Jilly’s on Smack
- Over the Falls
- Hello Skinny
- Lee Van Cleef
- Eyes of the Squirrel
- Groundhog’s Day
- American Life
- Hamburger Train
- Tommy the Cat
Orbital:
- One Big Moment
- Halcyon + On + On
- Beelzedub
- Never
- Wonky
- Where Is It Going?
- Impact (The Earth Is Burning)
- Lush 3
The Stub Collection 