Moby The Well Rounded Interview

That says a lot about the enigmatic guy who was born Richard Hall, but began to be known as Moby in his youth, in reference to a long lost uncle named Herman Melville, who had apparently written some sort of book about a big fish. Moby is, by his own admission, “a self-indulgent artist,” who would rather satisfy himself than his fans, his record company, or anyone else. Strangely enough, his new album, Play, might make everyone happy. It’s an eclectic album that reinvisions dance music as the cut-and-paste product of such disparate musical strains as Delta blues, punk-rock, trip-hop, Southern gospel, and Baroque piano fugues. And somehow it all comes out sounding like incredibly catchy pop music.

But as accessible as Play is, Moby remains an elusive figure. Often portrayed as an outspoken, rabidly political, vehemently Christian, “Just Say No”- spouting, vegan, he really defies such easy categorization. In some ways, he’s all of these things, yet, the closer you look, really none of them seem to be true. Moby took some time out to talk to WRE about his many contradictions, his new album, and why he still thinks Animal Rights was one of the best albums of the decade.

You had said that Animal Rights was largely a reaction too what was going on in with dance music. Have you since become reinvested in dance music?

Back then, I was very disenchanted with the dance scene but now, to be honest with you I love everything. At this point, I love dance music and I like classical music and I like punk-rock and I like hip-hop and folk music. There really isn’t a type of music I don’t like.

I had read something where you had said that your manager had said that he liked Animal Rights but that your dance music made people happier and that gave you a new perspective on doing dance music. Is that true?

Sort of. I remember that conversation, but I don’t know. From my perspective, I’ve never seen the reason to do one type of music at the exclusion of anything else. This album Play, is not a rock record, but it’s not really a dance record either, it’s just a record of music that I’m in love with. It doesn’t fit neatly into any one genre.

Are you concerned with making people happy through your music?

Oh, I don’t know about happy, but I’m quite concerned about making music that people can fall in love with. I like the idea of making records that people can use in their daily lives and fall in love with and listen to when they’re getting ready to go to sleep or driving to work or driving home from work. I like the idea of making a record that someone can be intimately involved with.

And where does your own happiness fit into the equation?

Do you think that was the case with Animal Rights?

Yeah, although it was funny with Animal Rights cause what happened with that was that when it first came out, the response to it was really negative, then in the ensuing years I’ve had an awful lot of people come back to me and say when they first heard it, they sort of dismissed it out of hand, but when they went back and listened to it more, they realized they actually liked it a lot.

How did the initial reaction to it affect you?

It didn’t affect me that much. The only frustrating thing is that if you read a bad review about a record that you’ve made or a bad article or something, it’s a one-sided conversation. If someone attacks me in the press for doing something, I can’t defend myself. And that’s fine, that’s the system that we’ve all chosen to live with. I respect and appreciate freedom of the press, but it can be frustrating.

So looking back on it now, what’s your opinion of Animal Rights? Do you have a different opinion of it from when it came out?

I love it, I think it’s one of the best records made in the last 10 years. At the risk of sounding arrogant and immodest, I think it’s a stunning, sophisticated, complicated body of work.

I’d probably add bold to that list. You had to know that wasn’t the record that was going to satiate your fans.

Yeah, it was very self-indulgent, but then again, I think part of that is artistic license and the very nature of being a self-involved artist is that occasionally you do very self-indulgent things. I was surprised at the fact that people got so upset because it just seemed like from me, from my perspective, it seemed like a very natural record to make.

Did you see your audience change after Animal Rights?

Well, certainly the people who had been expecting me to make a dance record were disappointed. I mean, at this point, once again I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant but what I find is that the people who like my records and buy my records tend to be very open-minded and very smart. And I guess, especially regarding the open-minded aspect of it, in order to be a Moby fan, being open-minded certainly seems to be a prerequisite.

How did Elektra react to the album?

At first they really liked it and then when they realized that it wasn’t going to be a million selling record they ran away from it as fast as they could. I think major labels are good at doing certain things. They’re good at making Top 40 music, but my advice to any artist who’s even remotely idiosynchratic would be stay as far away from a major label as possible. I left Elektra a year ago, so in the last year I’ve been meeting with tons of different record labels and some of the conversations I’ve had with people at major labels are just terrifying. I mean, these major labels, at this point, are all owned by big, big parent corporations. And the parent corporations spent so much money buying the labels, now, the labels have to generate huge quarterly profits for the parent companies to justify it to the shareholders. So these labels, they’re not too concerned with music anymore, they’re concerned with market-share and quarterly profits, so some of the conversations I had with people at major labels are just horrifying.

One of the first things I noticed about the new album was the heavy Delta blues and southern gospel influences, what pushed you in that direction?

I didn’t really think about it that much to be honest with you. I was a party a few years ago and a friend of mine loaned me this box set on Atlantic called Sounds of the South and it had these old field recordings made by Alan Lomax Jr.--fairly anonymous people singing in churches or prisons and I loved it and a lot of the vocals were a capella so I sampled them and wrote songs around them and then I realized that if these recordings were out there, there had to be other recordings like it. So then I found some other great old recordings and wrote songs around those. The strange thing is, I’ve done lots of interviews and a lot of people are kind of focusing on these old blues vocals but there’s only 6 songs on the record that are based around these old blues vocals.

I think part of it though is, that it just seems a lot more pronounced and they stand out quite a bit. Sort of like the way on Animal Rights, some of the really hardcore punk stuff stood out from the classical piano bits.

Yeah, that’s the other thing. On Animal Rights, a third of the record was slow, quiet instrumentals and it’s funny, when people talk about that record they tend to refer to it as a punk rock record, and I’m like, “Well, two-thirds of it is hard, but the other third isn’t.”

The emotions that come out of the new album seem pretty different from what was going on on Animal Rights. Do you listen back to Animal Rights and Everything Is Wrong, now, and hear it conjuring up the way you were feeling during those particular time periods?

To an extent. It’s funny though, I can make very joyful, happy, lighthearted music when I’m feeling terribly depressed and I can conversely make very somber, serious depressing music when I’m feeling pretty light-hearted and happy. And I’m sure that I’m reflected -- my experiences and who I am are reflected in the music that I make, but I think on a much more general level. Much more cumulative level as well.

Do you think your beliefs or your insistence on being pretty outspoken about them has affected your career in a negative way?

Probably. I mean, the frustrating thing for me is that my beliefs

“The only frustrating thing is that if you read a bad review about a record that you’ve made or a bad article or something, it’s a one-sided conversation. If someone attacks me in the press for doing something, I can’t defend myself.”

are very weird but a lot of times they’ve been portrayed as being very strident and conventional. So I remember one time, I was signing autographs in Detroit and this one kid standing in line said to me, “Wow, I think it’s really wonderful that you’re a Christian,” and this other kid standing next to him, looked at me and said, “You’re a Christian? That’s fucked up.” And he got pissed and walked away. And my feeling was neither one of them understood. Cause I love Christ but it’s such a complicated issue. Y’know, the universe is 15 billion years old and we live on a planet that’s 5 billion years old and I’m around for 33 years, how dare I be so presumptuous as to make any sort of subjective statement about the way things are? All I can say subjectively is what I know of Christ I really love. That doesn’t mean I’m right and everybody else is wrong and it doesn’t even make me a Christian it just makes me a simple, naive guy who has certain subjective beliefs.

When Everything is Wrong came out and blew up, you were pigeonholed as this techno guy even though you had been playing all sorts of music for about 20 years. Have the things you’ve done since then been any sort of conscious attempt to make it impossible for people to pigeonhole you?

It hasn’t been a conscious attempt but that’s certainly what I’ve accomplished (laughs). I mean, I never really thought about it too much. The only thing that I was concerned with was making records that I loved and that were interesting to me and hopefully would be interesting to other people.

David Peisner