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When Budapest’s indie rock band The Moog started to play music, they had no idea that they were about to set off for a journey that would eventually whisk them far across the seas, release them into a whirlwind of rock and roll, and land them on America’s doorstep as the first Hungarian rock band signed to an American label.
The Moog came together out of the friendship of Tonyó (vocals, keyboard), Gergõ (drums) and Ádi (guitar), classmates, who spent their formative years jamming together in their free time playing Nirvana, Led Zeppelin and Placebo covers, as well as writing their own material. In 2004, they decided to get serious about their band, and almost immediately afterward met Csabi (bass) at a bar. They all realised that his musical tastes were so closely aligned with theirs (a rarity at the time in Hungary), that he was destined to join the band. Csabi did not, in fact, know how to play the bass, but was so passionate about the music that he quickly learned. Miguel (guitar), already a known guitarist in the Hungarian music scene, was offered the last spot in the band and jumped at the opportunity. The Moog found a common love for music and good hair in one another.
The Moog’s first ever show came at the ‘No Future’ festival of the Wan2 music magazine. Several gigs followed in their hometown Budapest, but they were also invited to Vienna, Craccow, and Bratislava.
In October 2005, The Moog reached the finals of the Hungarian-Austrian talent contest ‘ABC’ among several hundred applicants, and also finished their first ever recording around this time, the three-track Clambake EP.
The band started 2006 with several gigs lined-up and a growingly popular Myspace page, and for the biggest excitement of all, the LA-based label MuSick Recordings surfed in on the World Wide Web to offer the band a record deal.
Their first LP ‘Sold For Tomorrow’ was ready for US release in April 2007. The Moog tracked the album in Budapest, and mixed in Seattle with Jack Endino, known to have worked with Therapy, Soundgarden, Bruce Dickinson, not to mention Nirvana on their first album Bleach. The result was an entertaining, joyfully worriless indie pop-rock album full of catchy tunes on the path of Strokes and Beach Boys. Tom-Tom Records happily took the opportunity to grant a release for the album in Hungary.
The band – still at the average age of only 23 – went on their first US tour in February 2007 playing at almost thirty different venues across the states in six weeks. The Moog was also selected to play at the South by South West showcase festival in Austin, Texas, among the twenty-odd thousand bands who applied.
Apart from a regular radio play, the two very engaging music videos for the tracks ‘I like you’ and ‘Everybody Wants’ featured in the top rotation of the Hungarian MTV and Viva TV for three whole months. On MTVu, the student channel of the American MTV, both music videos came out as a weekly favorite in the Freshmen programme. The Moog also proudly let the world success series ER use their hit ‘I Like You’ in one of the episodes, exposing the song to tens of millions of people.
The Moog started 2008 with recording their second LP in Seattle with producer Geoff Ott, who had previously worked with Queens Of The Stone Age, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam among others. The band then set off for an 18-concert European Tour to promote ‘Sold For Tomorrow’ as the Cologne-based India Records released the album in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the BeNeLux states - while Rock On Records took the album to Spain. At the end of tour, another good news came in for the boys, as Columbia Music arranged a Japan release for ‘Sold For Tomorrow’ with a new cover and a bonus track.
The second album, ‘Razzmatazz Orfeum’, came out on the 1st of May, 2009 in Hungary, and the 21st of July in the USA. The single ‘You Raised as Vampire’ led up the new material, which showed that The Moog intended to move on from their first album with a new, rich, garage-goth sound that featured their Moog synth a lot more. This was a very exciting change of path, and made the band stand apart from most of their fellow indie-rockers. The single release featured a cover version of a song from one of The Moog’s biggest idols, Bauhaus, for which the original Bauhaus bass player David J joined in from the famous English band that are considered the first ever gothic rock band.
The Moog released their third LP in 2012, called ‘Seasons in The Underground’. The album’s producer was the legendary engineer Ken Scott (David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Beatles, George Harrison, Jeff Beck). The result is a bright, garage-y power pop-rock album with a lot of tunes that are again very hard to resist listening over and over again.
For the release of ‘Seasons in The Underground’, The Moog moved to Los Angeles in March 2012 for approximately one year.
