Dan Deacon Covers Eno, Julianna Barwick Covers Suicide, YACHT Cover Devo on Moogfest EP

Moogfest has announced that it will take place May 19-22, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. (It moves from its previous location in Asheville.) In conjunction with the announcement, the festival has released the EP Translational Drifts: Moogfest Volume 1, the first in a series of releases featuring contemporary artists covering classic electronic music tracks.

The EP contains YACHT covering Devo’s “Space Grrrl Blues”, Dan Deacon doing Brian Eno’s “1/1″, Julianna Barwick’s version of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”, Mosey Sumney tackling Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”, and ADULT. doing Pet Shop Boys’ “Shopping”. Listen to the whole thing below.

Deacon said of his Eno cover:

When I got the initial email about the comp and saw the list of artists available to cover I immediately thought about Eno’s Music for Airports. I often think about different airports are from when that piece was initially composed. I thought about how frantic and chaotic airports are now, how overwhelming they can be. From there I began thinking about how to best realize a cover.

I chose to “transcribe” Eno’s recording using Ableton audio to MIDI tools. After some cleaning of the MIDI I ramped the tempo to 999 beats per minute and recorded it being performed by a computer controlled upright player piano. To me the track somehow still maintains an ambient feel due to the new cluster formations that appear due to the insane speed.

I went with the player piano, over synths, as the instrument because my favorite performance memory from Moogfest was my four hour durational performance for player piano and electronics. I actually bought the piano off Craigslist specifically for that Moogfest set.

Watch Dan Deacon perform at 285 Kent on Pitchfork.tv:

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