听 Robert Moog, the American pioneer in the mid-60s of the modern synthesiser, is the subject of this amiable documentary. Director Hans Fjellestad doesn't steer a conventional chronological path in telling this story of man and machine: the focus is on interviews with the 70-year-old inventor himself and with musicians such as Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, who enthusiastically embraced the Moog technology.
An unassuming, snowy-haired 70-year-old who enjoys spending time in his organic garden in North Carolina, Moog (the surname rhymes with vogue) recalls how his invention was originally greeted with considerable suspicion and hostility. At a conference he was asked whether he felt guilty for having developed a supposedly 'unnatural' technology, which might jeopardise the creativity of human beings. And so bulky and expensive were his prototype synthesisers, that they were bought only by production houses creating soundtracks for adverts and films. It wasn't until the commercial success of Wendy Carlos' Switched-On Bach album in the late 60s that the portable Minimoog became the darling of progressive rock outfits such as Emerson, Lake And Palmer and Yes.
"HIS ALMOST MYSTICAL CONNECTION WITH HIS WORK"
In its slender running time, Moog offers little in the way of wider social context. Instead Fjellestad lets his subject do the talking, as he reveals his almost mystical connection with his work: "I can feel what's going on inside of a piece of electronic equipment." There's sadness though in his observation that he imagined his invention would be part of an interaction between musicians and live audiences, rather than a device for producers to detach themselves in studios away from listeners.
