Moby’s known how to play for well over a decade
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 6, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Cyrus McNally Cyrus is a fourth-year
neuroscience student who is currently developing a dependable
neural prosthesis module ““ and matching cryogenesis jumpsuit.
E-mail him at [email protected].
If you haven’t heard of Moby by now, you either hate dance
music with a passion or you’ve been living in Boelter your
whole life.
Despite what your preconceptions might be, Moby ““ aka
Richard Melville Hall ““ has been around. He’s been
cutting phat, revolutionary dance tracks since you were in Pampers
(well, supposing you were wearing Pampers up until or after 1982).
But thanks to the huge success of his 1999 multi-platinum album
“Play,” he has only recently caught the limelight.
Each and every track on “Play” has been licensed for
either commercials or movie soundtracks, meaning you’ve
probably heard Moby without even knowing it. For example,
“Play’s” first single, “Porcelain,”
was featured in the soundtrack of last year’s “The
Beach,” alongside Orbital’s collaboration with Angelo
Badalamenti (whom Moby sampled in his first big hit,
“Go”) and a host of other electronic music
innovators.
Moby was born in 1965 in Harlem, New York; the great-great
grandnephew of Herman Melville, who inspired his namesake with his
required-reading classic “Moby Dick.” A
multi-instrumentalist, he took up the guitar by age 9 and began
making recordings in his basement three years later. After getting
into proto-goth bands like Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen,
Moby was inspired to start his own group, and ended up playing gigs
with hardcore groups, like Flipper, for whom he assumed vocal
duties while its frontman was serving out a jail sentence.
Even though he has since renounced almost all of his outward
beliefs he so vehemently urges in his CD booklets, Moby stands by
his commitment to quality in production of his music. “The
strange thing is,” declared Moby in the liner notes of a 1993
CD compilation, “I played in bands for a long time and when I
started making dance music I never anticipated it leading to any
sort of success.” Needless to say, the success has piled on
even higher since, and he will most likely continue the trend.
A New York DJ since dropping out of college in 1984, Moby
didn’t release his first single until 1990. Titled
“Go,” the track became an instant dance floor smash,
rising into the UK top 10, where the rave scene was just getting
into full gear. “Go” borrows string samples from a
rather odd source ““ Badalamenti’s theme to the cult
series “Twin Peaks” ““ to introduce a thundering
house beat and flanged synthesizers, underneath diva vocals and an
angry group of men chanting the title.
Perhaps “Go” hit the right place at the right time,
propelling Moby into instant celebrity, but his first EP for
Elektra Records in 1993 failed to gather any of the attention
“Go” garnered. With the disappointing sales of
1995’s “Everything is Wrong,” Moby fell back into
obscurity.
Between those two years, however, Moby helped redefine the role
of the dance-music producer. With his hit club single
“Move,” and the experimental release
“Thousand” (entered into the Guinness Book of World
Records for being the fastest single ever recorded ““ at 1000
bpms!) ““ as well as his maniacally invigorating live
performances, he became a highly respected figure. With his fame,
he procured remixing jobs from artists such as Michael Jackson,
Brian Eno, Depeche Mode and the B-52’s.
Also of note are Moby’s two contributions to the
soundtrack of the 1995 crime epic “Heat.” His first
track, “New Dawn Fades,” is a drum-heavy remake of an
apocalyptic Joy Division song, setting the mood for a hi-tech,
inner-city bank robbery sequence. The other track, celestially
titled “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters,” (said
by Moby to be his favorite piece he ever recorded), sets delicate
layers of tinkling piano riffs rising above a brooding string
section, and climaxing with thundering cymbal crashes. It’s
hard to think of a worthier song to accompany the scene where
Robert DeNiro bleeds to death. While 1996’s “Animal
Rights” fared only slightly better than “Everything is
Wrong,” 1997’s “I Like to Score” is a just
portrayal of Moby’s self-owned style, capturing the
highlights of his career as soundtrack producer and giving clues as
to where his future work was headed.
Two years later, “Play” hit the stores, but not to
immediate popularity. It took at least three or four months on the
shelves before the public finally gave the album a chance; those
who even remembered the dance scene veteran were probably wary
because of his unpopular back catalog. Although Leonardo DiCaprio
and “The Beach” were contaminated,
“Porcelain” had an all-around clean vibe, being
instantly recognizable and receiving much airplay. Other singles
like “South Side” (whose original take featured vocals
by Gwen Stefani) and “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad”
helped propel “Play” into the Billboard Top 10, and to
No. 1 in Europe.
In case you haven’t already heard it, “Play”
is more than poignant soundtrack pieces, varying stylistically from
clubland smashes (“Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad”) to
guitar-driven rock (“South Side”) to breathtaking
ambience (“My Weakness”).
Although most of the old-time American music remakes
(“Honey” and “Find My Baby”) are taken from
the same “Music of the South” compilation album, Moby
breathes new life into old ““ very old ““ recordings by
adding phat drum beats, blistering bass lines and record scratches,
successfully touching up the oldest of the old with the newest of
the new. The album’s genre-technology crossbreed results in a
unique success ““ much like the success of its creator.
With “Songs,”a new compilation of pre-
“Play” material recently released, Moby hopes to bring
new fans up to snuff on a decade’s worth of old material with
tracks from four of his previous releases. Although he is not
touring at the moment, his next gig is later this month at Carnegie
Hall for the Tibet House Organization, where he will play alongside
fellow music revolutionaries Philip Glass and David Bowie.
A trend-setter, Moby continues to break the limits of what can
or should influence dance music with his recent live shows ““
even though he has already been quietly breaking ground for over a
decade.
