SoundCtrl at Moogfest: Kraftwerk, Nick Zinner, Jimmy Edgar, Awesome Tapes from Africa

After a grueling 11-hour drive from Brooklyn, we arrived in downtown Asheville to hit the ground running at this year’s Moogfest. With an impressive, yet overwhelming schedule, even sleep deprivation couldn’t impinge on our marathon evening of improvisational performances, DJ sets, and of course, 3D concerts.

We made our way into the industrial concrete hall of Asheville’s Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, where Nick Zinner, guitarist of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Bradford Cox, the outspoken lead singer and guitarist of Deerhunter, were into their final hour of the 4-hour durational performance. Exploring the sounds of their guitars exclusively via Moog pedals, Zinner and Cox alternated control of the droning, hypnotic improvisations, slowly transitioning through melodic themes by tweaking effects, samples, and percussive triggers. An entranced audience settled into the performance as beautifully eerie and colorful projections by visual artists Jesse Hlebo and Hisham Bharoocha provided an complementary ephemeral backdrop.

Photo by Lane Banning, courtesy of Moog

The undisputed talk about town (a wonderfully cheerful population, I might add) that evening was Kraftwerk‘s 3D performance at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. We donned our 3D specs and joined the ecstatic crowd as the German quartet played their classics with exacting facility. Although Kraftwerk’s most iconic music serves as commentary to the age of burgeoning 1980s technology, the reinvention and innovation of their music for a modern context is as relevant as ever. Though the speakers blew midway through the set, the dedicated audience stuck it out until the band came back 20 minutes later, setting off the end of their set with classic “The Man-Machine.”

Photo by Lane Banning, courtesy of Moog

After catching a bit of Tiga‘s punching Berlinesque techno in the basement below the auditorium (dubbed by some concertgoers as “The Rave Cave”), we danced to the funky, dirty grooves that are always anticipated in a DJ set by Jimmy Edgar. Blending the mechanized funk grooves of his hometown Detroit with the prodding techno of Berlin, Edgar’s irresistibly danceable set sustained the energy at the at-capacity Asheville Music Hall.

Photo by Lane Banning, courtesy of Moog

Finally, Awesome Tapes from Africa the DJ moniker of Brian Shimkovitz, who runs the blog of the same name, challenged the audience at Emerald Lounge to keep up with the drastic tempo changes and genre-defying stylings of his deepest digs. With banging workouts fueled by drums and call-and-response vocal lines, Asheville received a rare treat as Shimkovitz DJ’ed hand-picked cassettes from across the African continent.