Leave your fedora at home, because How to Dress Well will headline this year’s Moefest on Friday, May 8.
Now in its fifth year, Moefest is WHRW 90.5 FM’s biggest annual event. The free music festival will be held on the Peace Quad starting at noon. How to Dress Well — the stage name for Chicago-based artist Tom Krell and his band — will play at 8 p.m.
Krell is known for his ambient electronic, pop and R&B music, as well as for publishing free mixtapes on SoundCloud. Since 2010, he has released three albums and one EP, each to critical acclaim. Pitchfork called his most recent album — 2014’s “What Is This Heart?” — “a pop album of the highest caliber.”
Jizzy Fra — otherwise known as Jared Frazer, a senior majoring in English — will open for Krell by playing his trippy remixes as part of his DJ set. Prime Ordeal, the 10-piece student funk band that opened the Spring Fling concert, will play before him, along with several other student and local musicians, including a freestyle group.
In the past couple of years, Moefest has been held on the Newing College and Hinman College quads, but this year it will be in the middle of campus, on the Peace Quad.
“It’ll attract a wider audience and get people who aren’t just involved in the station,” said Carly Klein, WHRW promotions director and a sophomore majoring in English. “People who aren’t part of WHRW will get to be part of the concert, just like Spring Fling.”
The Binghamton Food Co-Op and the Student Association Programming Board will provide snacks on the Peace Quad, but there will be no food from Moe’s this year. Daniel Kadyrov, WHRW’s general manager and a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, said that Moefest actually has no connection with the Tex-Mex restaurant, but is named after the station’s mascot.
“Moe Loogham is the spirit of the station from the 1980s,” Kadyrov said. “In the 1970s, there was graffiti written on some part of campus saying ‘Moe Loogham is coming!,’ but he was actually a drug dealer from the 1970s from Long Island. So obviously the station would be obsessed with a drug dealer from the 1970s as their prophet.”
WHRW will provide giveaways, and throughout the day attendees will be able to paint a banner hung outside, which will then be placed in the WHRW office in the New University Union basement for the following year.