This is the first of a three-part look into the factory, warehouse, company, and people involved in manufacturing (by hand) the incredibly complex and indescribably influential Moog instruments. This edition gives a a first-hand view of the Moog Factory experience from the point of view of an "outsider" (a fan and writer). The follow-up pieces will show two very different perspectives - a first-hand from an artist/musician and a detailed full behind-the-scenes look with the Moog Music Staff.
Before I’d ever been to it, I imagined Moog Music Inc. (aka, the Moog Factory) as a sort of clinical place. My only prior mental images for the assembly of electronic devices came from those Daft Punky “Intel Inside” ads with the space suited engineers working on an assembly line. This meshed well with a sort of naïve idea I had of electronic music as more abstract than acoustic music, less spontaneous or less crunchy granola. From that perspective, I suppose I figured that a facility for making future space bleep music instruments should look more like a soviet dentist’s office than a pottery studio.
Of course it’s nothing of the kind. A three-story, brick, loft-like building perched on the edge of downtown Asheville, the factory looks more like a place where you’d make pianos or wickerware than synthesizers. Banks of tinted windows allow the curious to peer in to watch the builders at work on the floor or to oggle the gear in the factory store, which sells Moog merchandise but not the actual instruments (those have to be shipped). As you enter the store, you’re greeted by a large grey mural from which Bob Moog peers down at you wisely from behind a small stage for demos and exhibition gigs.
A small black door leads to the airy workshop where there are neat work benches and tables featuring partially assembled instruments, raw plywood paneled offices, and broad smooth concrete floors. The abundance of natural, unfinished wood contrasts pleasantly with the slick black knobs, shiny keys, and silver wiring filling the tables, which are configured more like Santa’s workshop than an assembly line. In the back are those 2-story Costco-type shelves crammed full of Voyagers, Moogerfogers, Tauruses, Little Phattys, and Theremins boxed and ready to ship. There’s also a small recording studio, called the Sound Lab, where a number of the Moogfest acts stopped to put something down for posterity.
My visit to Asheville included only one weekday, so the first thing I made sure to do was to take advantage of the chance to see the builders at work. Since I don’t spend much time in factories, I’m always impressed by how quickly people work in them—we’re much more lethargic in the office drone world, I think. This sensation was multiplied by the precise and technical nature of the work being done. Still, it was obvious in every motion how much care was going in to the simplest steps in the manufacturing process of these wonderful instruments. I overheard a woman leading a factory tour explain, for instance, that part of the reason it takes so long for Moog to fill an order for a custom synth is that they reject so many more components than other manufacturers. You could see, if you paid attention, that the workers were thoughtfully examining each part while they worked, even before the instruments were subjected to any quality control per se.
Quality control itself is a mysterious process. The synths are first power cycled for 24 hours in order to suss out any issues. Next, they are taken into one of several small offices off the main floor to be tested. The testers crank up the volume and whizz along each bank of knobs, frantically spinning each to its extremes while paying close attention to the sound, looking like the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy sees behind the curtain. Instruments lie on large racks around the room awaiting this treatment, of all different colors and grains, many of them customized to a particular customer’s aesthetic. Pleasant analog sounds drift in to a certain degree from the store, where Moog fans noodle away at the sample instruments on display, as the wall between factory and display floor does not go quite all the way up.
It was a pleasant place to sit and write, although I was careful to tuck myself out of the way of anyone doing more useful work. A web radio station that had set up to broadcast live from the factory was kind enough to let me on their wifi to post articles. Moby, the Antlers, Dan Deacon, and Twin Shadow dropped by at various points to munch vegan sandwiches and play sessions in the Sound Lab. As the light faded each day, gradually the time would come to pack it in and head out to hear more music.
In the store, a number of talks and gigs were staged specially for the festival. Memorable to me was a Sunday dual set by Dan Deacon and Neon Indian. Hunched over two tables jammed full of various analog devices crammed full of patch cables like some sort of hellish ‘40s phone bank, they modulated strange shivering bass sounds pierced with shrieking treble pitches. The music was arrythmic, for the most part, but intensely engaging, like watching someone carefully removing the peel of an orange in one piece. A cluster of photographers climbing over themselves to find some unique angle from which to document this happening added a strange Felliniesque touch to the scene.
Before I left Moog Music for the final time that weekend, I noticed a musician who I didn’t know by face with headphones jacked into a Voyager, fiddling knobs with his right hand while he nursed a Dixie cup in the other. When he let me hear what he was doing, I was amazed at the rush of warm analog sound he had created. Holding down any key, he had manipulated the envelope such that low frequencies reverbed in a regular pattern, while a higher pitched static sort of paradiddled along polyrythmically. You could practically dance to just that one note. I grinned at him and realized the most important lesson I had learned that weekend: I need to own a Moog synthesizer.
Post new comment