- Moogfest feels like five different festivals crammed into one. For gear heads, it's like being a kid in a candy shop, with a pop-up marketplace where you can play with the newest music kit on the market. There were also synth-building workshops and lectures about the science of sound design, circuit-bending contests and presentations on brain-machine audio interfaces. For researchers, scientists and thinkers, there were lectures about everything from self-driving cars to the Large Hadron Collider to transhumanist philosophy and machine learning. There was an activist element, with sessions about amplifying marginal voices in DJ culture and discussion groups about the past, present and future of protest music. Scattered across venues in Downtown Durham, North Carolina, the daytime program alone could have constituted a four-day festival of design, technology, art and innovation.
Then there's all of the music. Most of the ambient and electro-acoustic shows took place in an old brick church on the far edge of downtown, where light filtered through stained glass down onto the performers. There was also plenty of house and techno, so you could just come and rave for three days. The main stage was heavy on Coachella-friendly names like Animal Collective and Flying Lotus. Next to that was a cozy rock club that hosted a night of heavy electronics and noise. There was something for almost anybody. Part of the fun was running around in a blur, going from a solo harp performance to a philosophy lecture, followed by a noise show and a couple hours of dancing. Thankfully all of the music ended at 2 AM—by the end of each day I was nearly dead on my feet.
Here are five key performances from across the weekend.
Russell E.L. Butler
You're going to start hearing Russell Butler's name a lot more often. The Oakland-based artist opened the festival's nighttime program on day one, and though it was still light out when he stepped up to his machines, a line had already formed on Durham's main strip. Kitted with a modular synth rack, a drum machine and a couple of pedals, Butler played one of the most refreshing live techno sets I've seen in months. Managing to get the sober crowd moving by 8 PM, his set was full of odd, jagged melodies and tough drums with just the right amount of crunch, moving at urgent speeds that seemed to brush 140 BPM. You could tell from the pacing that he'd mapped out aspects of the hour-long arrangement, but there was also plenty of improvisation, where things got pleasantly out of control. It was a whirlwind ride that moved from wild-eyed acid to angular electro and even bass-heavy half-step, and an excellent way to ring in the first night of Moogfest.
Wolf Eyes
Wolf Eyes is the soundtrack to the worst trip of your life. Where other harsh noise bands tend to go for sheer power or brutality, these guys access something more nuanced—a feeling of deep discomfort and dread. There's a rich field of dissonance that forms between the band's bleating saxophone squawks and sludgy guitar drones, which are cut through with needling synthesizers that rise and fall in wide, unstable parabolas. It's not so much a wall of sound as a swirling phantasmagoria of discord. With so many textural details, part of the fun is choosing where to place your attention.
Princess Nokia
When I walked into the New York rapper's show, she was on stage with two smiling little girls in tutus twirling on either side of her. At one point she carried a child in one arm while holding her microphone with the other, singing about the beauty of motherhood and sisterhood—topics you don't hear about much in underground rap. Part of what makes Princess Nokia such a compelling performer, apart from her pure, unadulterated power, is the rich complexity of her character. She moved effortlessly between dreamy R&B tracks like "Young Girls" and slamming party starters like "Tomboy" without giving in to the notion that one might contradict the other. She's a flawless rapper with seemingly inexhaustible energy and a rare stage presence. At only 24 years old, she seems to have figured out the all of the answers. It's only up from here.
K-HAND
Moogfest put most of its big-room DJs in a spacious, if bare-bones, ballroom venue called The Armory. With its high ceilings and intense lighting, it required a certain level of drama from the DJs that played there. K-HAND rose to the challenge. The Detroit hero may be best known for raw, funky house tracks, but she's done everything from druggy acid to slamming hard house—and she's done them well. For her set at Moogfest, she brought no-bullshit peak-time techno, with plenty of bleepy, austere loop tracks balanced out by theatrical breakdowns and interludes. It would have fit just as well in Tresor's concrete vault.
Container
I've seen Ren Schofield's live set five times by now, and I'd happily see him again tomorrow. He gets better with every gig, and rather than reinventing his set every time, he's sharpened it down to its deadliest point. His performance at Moogfest was exactly what I hoped for—a ferocious blitz of drum machine loops squeezed through a heavy filter of tape saturation, with occasional breaks for slower, weirder material. Over the last couple of years his tracks have leaned more towards nuanced experiments in sound design, and this time he managed to get some really wild, malfunctioning machine screeches out of his gear. By offsetting the raw power of his breakneck noise techno with a more complex textural element, he's added depth to his sets.
Photo credit /
Stephanie Leathers - Lead
Erez Avissar - Russell E.L. Butler
Todd Turner - Princess Nokia
Jonny Underwood - K-Hand
Erika Mugglin - Wolf Eyes
Laath Martin - Container
Wolf Eyes Wolf Eyes is the soundtrack to the worst trip of your life. Where other harsh noise bands tend to go for sheer power or brutality, these guys access something more nuanced—a feeling of deep discomfort and dread. There's a rich field of dissonance that forms between the band's bleating saxophone squawks and sludgy guitar drones, which are cut through with needling synthesizers that rise and fall in wide, unstable parabolas. It's not so much a wall of sound as a swirling phantasmagoria of discord. With so many textural details, part of the fun is choosing where to place your attention.
Princess Nokia When I walked into the New York rapper's show, she was on stage with two smiling little girls in tutus twirling on either side of her. At one point she carried a child in one arm while holding her microphone with the other, singing about the beauty of motherhood and sisterhood—topics you don't hear about much in underground rap. Part of what makes Princess Nokia such a compelling performer, apart from her pure, unadulterated power, is the rich complexity of her character. She moved effortlessly between dreamy R&B tracks like "Young Girls" and slamming party starters like "Tomboy" without giving in to the notion that one might contradict the other. She's a flawless rapper with seemingly inexhaustible energy and a rare stage presence. At only 24 years old, she seems to have figured out the all of the answers. It's only up from here.
K-HAND Moogfest put most of its big-room DJs in a spacious, if bare-bones, ballroom venue called The Armory. With its high ceilings and intense lighting, it required a certain level of drama from the DJs that played there. K-HAND rose to the challenge. The Detroit hero may be best known for raw, funky house tracks, but she's done everything from druggy acid to slamming hard house—and she's done them well. For her set at Moogfest, she brought no-bullshit peak-time techno, with plenty of bleepy, austere loop tracks balanced out by theatrical breakdowns and interludes. It would have fit just as well in Tresor's concrete vault.
Container I've seen Ren Schofield's live set five times by now, and I'd happily see him again tomorrow. He gets better with every gig, and rather than reinventing his set every time, he's sharpened it down to its deadliest point. His performance at Moogfest was exactly what I hoped for—a ferocious blitz of drum machine loops squeezed through a heavy filter of tape saturation, with occasional breaks for slower, weirder material. Over the last couple of years his tracks have leaned more towards nuanced experiments in sound design, and this time he managed to get some really wild, malfunctioning machine screeches out of his gear. By offsetting the raw power of his breakneck noise techno with a more complex textural element, he's added depth to his sets. Photo credit / Stephanie Leathers - Lead Erez Avissar - Russell E.L. Butler Todd Turner - Princess Nokia Jonny Underwood - K-Hand Erika Mugglin - Wolf Eyes Laath Martin - Container