By Tom Lanham photos by Lindsay Hicks |
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I f you had the luxury of compiling a wish list of gab-gifted guests for the Perfect Dinner Party , you could do a lot worse than inviting techno-jazz-pop-ambient-symphonic Renaissance man Moby . Personally – without even touching on his four-decade , genre-jumping musical career — he has a true wealth of achievements to discuss , including his photography exhibits , two memoirs , the recent documentary film Moby Doc , his vegan restaurant Little Pine ( and subsequent Little Pine cookbook , and its attendant diet-centered flick Punk Rock Vegan Movie ), plus the topic nearest and dearest to his heart , animal rights activism itself . But in a compositional context , where to begin ? The man ’ s early more punk-scrappy endeavors ( an actual Animal Rights album back in ’ 96 ), worldwide breakthrough Play in ’ 99 , his later ambient and techno experiments , his lengthy roster of collaborations , or his regular diversions into film scoring ? Even a logical inroad – Resound NYC , his latest and second orchestral release for classical imprint Deutsche Grammophon offers a cornucopia of potential topical detours , such as his choice of vocalists to sing his reimagined catalog chestnuts – the former featuring Mark Lanegan , Kris Kristofferson , Jim James , Nataly Dawn , Skylar Grey , and others ; the latter boasting cameos from Gregory Porter , Amythyst Kiah , Margo Timmins , Damien Jurado , and Nicole Sherzinger . And with Moby , almost any inquiry leads to a fascinating , often labyrinthine yarn , as in , Why did he feature Kaiser Chiefs frontman Ricky Wilson in two separate tracks , “ South Side ” and “ The Perfect Life ”?
“ One time I was playing a festival with The Kaiser Chiefs , and they were on before me ,’ explains Moby , 57 . “ And I remember standing at
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the side of the stage , thinking , ‘ How the hell do I go on after this ?’ They ended with ‘ I Predict a Riot ,’ and there were 100,000 people jumping up and down , and I was like , ‘ Oh , boy . I should just pack it in and go home !’” The talk moves to Wilson himself , who happens to be one of the most superstitious men in rock . He regularly salutes magpies when he sees them , carefully steps over sidewalk cracks , and places his wristwatch on the bedside nightstand in the same position every evening .
Is Moby superstitious , as well ? He considers this for a minute . “ I ’ ll give you my truncated answer ,” he responds , like any thoughtful dinner guest . “ I ’ m not superstitious , but I do believe , self-evidently , that what humans perceive is nothing . I think that the actual ontological nature of the universe is so far beyond our understanding that things might be interconnected , and they might not be . And there ’ s a good chance that they are , but not in an anthropomorphized way .” Pause . “ Or , maybe in an anthropomorphized way . I have an open agnosticism , where our actions and our thoughts might have meaning and significance , or they might not have meaning and significance , so for me , I ’ m just sort of going through things in a very clumsy way , just trying to maybe gain a little bit of understanding .” In fact , there ’ s only one thing that we all can be sure of – that all cartoon animals still get unlimited credit at ACME . “ And they clearly don ’ t have to get government permits to buy explosives ,” he adds helpfully . Welcome to Moby ’ s fun , idiosyncratic world . Let the heady conversation commence !
IE : So you prefer Zoom Audio like I do , eh ? Why ? Moby : Well , okay . Ten or eleven years ago , I
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was watching this show Mr . Robot , and the first season was great , the second season less so , and the third season I didn ’ t even watch . But in the first season , there was a plot point around someone who is basically hacking people ’ s phones and computers and watching them on the cameras , and it seemed so within the realm of possibility that I just disabled all my cameras on my laptops , etcetera , and put tape over the cameras , because it just freaked me out . Any reasonably clever hacker can basically just – and not that I ever do anything interesting or compromising – but I don ’ t need to have someone hack my camera and see me picking my nose while I read the Washington Post online .
IE : You were way ahead of the game with Play . You realized , way back then , that the way – or the radio – of the future was to license your songs to TV , movies , and commercials . Because they are the new radio now . Moby : Well , what happened then was , when the album Play was released , it ended up being successful . But at first , no one paid attention to it . I mean , it got a couple of reviews , but the first month it was out , it sold nothing , and we were getting no radio play , there was almost no press , and on tour , we were playing to about 100 people a night , sometimes less . And the only people who expressed any interest in it were people in Los Angeles , doing film and TV things . And my managers and my record company and I just thought , “ You know what ? The only people who are interested are these think agents who want to use it in TV shows who want to use it in movies . So it would be pretty ridiculous to say no on principle , especially if it was licensing music to a TV show I
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was watching .” One of the early licenses was for Will & Grace , and I was like , “ Great ! Yeah – I watch Will & Grace ! And I ’ m thrilled to have a song on Will & Grace !
IE : I just heard this again a few minutes ago , this recent Volkswagen commercial with this great 4AD-ethereal song . And I had to look it up the first time I heard it – the song is by an artist called Class Actress , and she ’ s awesome . Moby : And it reminds me a little bit of , in the mid-nineties , Volkswagen had an ad that featured “ Pink Moon ” by Nick Drake . And in the early ‘ 80s , I worked at a record store , and my boss at the record store loved Nick Drake , so he got me to buy Five Leaves Left and all of the Nick Drake records , so I had been a huge Nick Drake fan since about 1982 . And I found out that because of this Volkswagen ad , Nick Drake sold more records in 1995 than he had sold in his entire career , times ten . Just simply by having that song . So I was like , “ You know what ? I am not a fan of cars . I am not a fan of commerce . But if it means that suddenly people are aware of Nick Drake , it ’ s hard to categorically criticize or condemn that process when sometimes it really draws attention to special music that otherwise would disappear .
IE : What are some recent licenses you ’ ve wrangled ? Moby : You know , I don ’ t know . I don ’ t pay attention to it . But one was last summer . I was watching the show Stranger Things , and during the last episode , one of my very obscure songs called “ When It ’ s Cold I ’ d Like to Die ” was playing for about three and a half minutes during the last episode . And it was so emotional , and it was very disconcerting , and nice
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