Moogfest
with Kraftwerk, Egyptian Lover, Giorgio Moroder, Clark and Moderat
Downtown Asheville
4/25/2014
After hearing from so many friends on the west coast and in the
northeast go on about how good Kraftwerk has been
on their current tour,
I called up my friend Brian and decided it was time for a road trip to
Asheville - Asheville had
Moogfest, and Moogfest had Kraftwerk.
After a leisurely drive up we hit the streets
of Asheville about 5 in the afternoon. They had the street in front of
the
Moog factory blocked off and in place of traffic was vendors and
food trucks and a big ass stage. Performing on that
stage was a guy
named
Egyptian Lover.
Initially I thought he was just a guy paying homage to the early days
of rap,
but it turns out he was an actual part of those early days! His
music was highly influenced by Afrika Bambaataa's
"Planet Rock" - very
VERY heavy 808 beats paired with a futuristic/robotic sound. The lover
sorta sing/raps his lyrics
and had a hype man there to help plus a dude
playing keyboards on a couple of tracks. In a word, it was fantastic.
Our next destination was up the hill to Thomas Wolfe, where we would see the early show by
Kraftwerk
(they had
already played once the night before and had another
scheduled for later this night). Honestly I don't think there is any
possible way to put into words the joy I felt from this performance.
Yeah, it's four old German dudes in matching outfits
playing electro
krautrock in front of 3D graphics, but it was oh so much more than
that. They played for two hours
spanning their entire catalog, but of
course I was most excited for the older material - I've still got a
smile plastered on
my face from hearing "The Robots" and "Numbers"
live. Truly the only even slightly negative thing I could say is I wish
they had played "Pocket Calculator," but given how happy I was walking
out of that auditorium, I won't be losing any
sleep over it. I might
have balked a little bit when I dropped over a hundred bucks for this
single day of Moogfest, but
this performance was worth every cent if not
more. You can peep the entire set list
here, if you're so inclined.
We walked a few blocks up the hill to the
Diana Wortham theater and the Warp Records showcase happening there.
There was a DJ/musician/performer named
Clark
doing his thing. The sort of instrumental noisy-electronic-techno
that
he was playing is so foreign to my usual listening habits I don't even
know where to start in describing his set.
Honestly, my best feel for
this is it sounds and feels exactly like the sort of music I, as a
non-raver, would expect to
hear at a rave - loud, repetitive,
beat-driven music with a little glitchy IDM (id that still a thing?)
thrown in. It was pretty
interesting for about twenty minutes, but an
hour of it was a bit much for me...I was definitely checking my phone
for the
time at the end.
Cheap Time
with
Last Year's Men and
Black ZinfandelThe Pinhook
2/27/2014
Somehow I'd never seen
Black Zinfandel,
despite their being on bills of shows I've attended (lazy late arrival
on my
part to blame) and by all accounts playing the sort of music that
would be right up my alley - that being something in
the neighborhood of
what the kids call "art punk," though I'm struggling to come up with
any particular comparisons.
I managed to catch their last three or so
songs, and I was really into it. Other people have referred to them as
garage
rock but I didn't get that vibe honestly. this may be due to
sharing the drummer of Whatever Brains, and I just can't
imagine that
guy playing garage rock. Also, the singer/guitarist has a bitching
white man afro, which makes my stupid
bald head sad and jealous at the
same time. I need another viewing to really pin down what they sound
like to me, and
I'll definitely be making a point of seeing them again,
and soon if possible.
Whatever Brains
with
Motor Skills and
Enemy WavesSlims
2/7/2014
I've seen a lot of
Whatever Brains
shows, and I mean A LOT, but this one definitely goes down as the
strangest.
They've been adding more and more keyboards to the stage
when they perform over the last year or two, but on this
night that's
all there was. No drums, no guitar, barely any vocals even...just
keyboards, synths, and other electronic
noise makers...oh and a tin
whistle, cause you gotta have something analog going on. There were no
songs, or at
least no known songs, just a long form electronic skronky
freak-out...it was sorta Throbbing Gristle-ish. Oh, and let's
not
forget the shitload of smoke they had spewing from their smoke machine,
they play that damn thing like it's another
instrument. It was a fun,
interesting performance, but to be perfectly honest I'd rather see their
regular show. Not that
something like this isn't a fun diversion every
once in a while.
Motor Skills had the middle slot. Or rather, a band called
Motor Skills
that barely resembled what I was expecting to
see had the middle slot.
I guess, I've seen a few different iterations of the group, but the
lack of Mike Dillon is a huge
change since he was the voice of the
band. In his place was a young girl, but take my designation of "young"
with a
grain of salt because I'm the worst person with ages ever. In
fact the entire band was different outside of the dude
who plays the
keyboards whose name I don't know but who has been in the band from the
start. It all sounded differ-
ent but still ok, not nearly as
electronic/dancey and a little more straight-forward indie pop, but I
was so thrown off by
it basically being a different band I'll need to
see them again to get a better feel for Motor Skills 2.0 or 3.0 or
what-
ever.0 version of the band this is.
