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Robert Moog, inventor of the modern synthesizer and one of the founding fathers of electronic music, makes his electric, analog keyboard machine feel organic in Hans Fjellestad’s engaging portrait. In the first five minutes of the film, the cogent, clear-eyed Moog (rhymes with rogue) says that he can feel what’s going on in a piece of electronics and that ideas come through him in a process that falls between discovering and witnessing. You don’t have to buy into his mystical musings to see that he’s an articulate and intelligent old man. Fjellestad films the white-haired engineer rocking on a porch swing and tending to tomatoes in his North Carolina garden as well as traipsing around Tokyo, New York, and LA giving lectures and meeting with musicians and collaborators including DJ intellectual Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) and Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Moog is of the moment, not caught up in the days of Switched-On Bach, Sergeant Pepper, or Emerson, Lake and Palmer. And though some of the techie talk gets obtuse at times, he reminds us that in the iPod age of solitary producers producing for solitary listeners, we can’t forget the importance of the interaction between live musicians and an audience. (70 minutes)
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN
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