Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
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Also this issue: Summer Monsters The Mountain Goats Neil Michael Hagerty Gina Scipione Fast Horse Summer Hootenanny |
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July 25-31, 2002
music
Replay
 STARS AND STIPES: Moby is beside himself touring with Bowie. |
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To some critics, Moby’s latest disc, 18, is merely a redux of 1999’s Play. The multi-platinum advertising marvel is not a horrible thing to crib from. And, you’d have to imagine, it’s best to borrow from yourself whenever possible.
Oddly enough, Moby concurs. Sort of.
"The history of popular music is littered with records in an artist's body of work similar to another. I might not agree that that's a valid criteria for criticism," he says on the phone from Birmingham, Ala., on a warmup tour before beginning his second entrepreneurial summer of festival concerteering. He's sharing the Area2 bill with David Bowie, Busta Rhymes and Blue Man Group.
Much like the way recently departed ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax found and recorded the universality of the human voice in the fields of the South, the rolling hills of Appalachia and voodoo-ritualist Haiti, Moby proved on his two most recent records that there's little distance between the gospel sounds and field hollers of Birmingham and the quietly sobbing sinew of throbbing electro-music self-made on Macs in Little Italy, New York City. He's led electronic music to an emotional theatrical core that it hasn't witnessed in some time -- a tender passionate place with a narrative lyrical palette, a gently dancey vibe, a grand mature melodicism and energy. The disc's quiet innovation may be why it's not a triple-A radio sensation like Play, or why you're not hearing it sell ads for Baileys Irish Cream, American Express or Nordstrom.
"I don't wish to be opaque as some critics assume. Rather, I hope I'm seen as direct. But I do think they're very similar records. I wasn't attempting to redux anything. They're not carbon copies. Yet the motivation behind both records [was] exactly the same: to make electronic music that was warm, soulful and emotional. Besides, everything I do is either intentional or clueless."
While tonal similarities remain Playful, the differences in 18's music are subtle. Play, despite its occasional tunefulness, was dependent on the wallpaper of repetitive trackiness. 18 is song-oriented -- an art effort that seems much at one with somebody in a nurturing, focused place.
"Success means different things to different people," he says. "Play meant a lot to people on a very emotional level. I don't know why. They didn't always know why. Now, that's neither good nor bad. But it did indeed feel like a nurturing place to work from."
Other than money and a greater hold of one's destiny, Moby had little to gain from Play's mega-ness. He's had a career of terrorist techno, ambient house, tacky thrash punk and soundtracks quieter than mice. "I feel guilty that nothing's changed," he says, laughing. "I'm 36, still live in the same apartment I have for the last seven years. [On tour], only the scale is different: three buses instead of one. But I still sleep in that bus' bunk."
Perhaps, between the nurturing and the maintenance of (relative) miniature scale led 18 back to the classic heavenly house sounds of Moby's first days in Manhattan, a lustrous musicalness that graces everything from soft melodicism to elastic, cushiony rhythms that support rather than drive each tune.
"That was so intentional," says Moby. "I was listening to tons of stuff that I used to hear from New York and Philly, stuff you'd hear bouncing between Paradise Garage and The Loft." This was dance music before it had a name, a warmer melodic sound that flowed from disco's demise into a need to maintain its soul. "Because so few people are familiar with that music, I thought people wouldn't pick up on that sound. But that's what I grew up with. I was a punk rock kid who drifted to places like Shelter and Berlin, where everything was an option."
Rather than allow sampled voices from beyond the grave to mumble and shout tales of heartbreak and desire, whispery singer Moby and his cast of songbirds join the stolen chorus of a cappella voices cribbed from scratchy records. "That's becoming harder to do on a logistical level -- find original unused voices in a cappella form," says Moby, who uses these mystery singers more to spit forth mantra. He and his singers then effectively take on Moby lyrics, an often Dadaist reportage ripe with romantic, needy, emotional flow that must borrow from the daily intercourse he utilizes via his website, www.moby.com.
"It's all driven by me, one person and his pathological need to communicate with people," says Moby of his website's daily diary section and its relationship to lyrics. "I use the same G4 for both. I can't help but make it reflective."
As on house music's finest moments, Moby seems drawn to the female voice to display his distaff texts. Though he sneaks a falsetto, femme-sounding Freedom Bremner onto "At Least We Tried," Sinéad O'Connor, Angie Stone and MC Lyte assay -- along with Moby -- his clinging delicate lyrics. "There's an intimate melodic quality in the female voice that I feel drawn toward. It's strong and vulnerable at the same time. You rarely find both in male vocals. When men are vulnerable I think ŒDock of the Bay.' Men have this dichotomy between Œtough' and Œsensitive.'"
Where men, music and dichotomies are concerned, Area2's all-boy lineup is earmarked by the presence of Moby's biggest influence, and that of the most intelligent sound post-'72, David Bowie. On the heels of his own finest hour, the elegiac Heathen (Columbia), Bowie, Moby's Manhattan neighbor, still seems an odd choice to co-headline. "Because neither one of us wants to headline, he's pushing me to do so," says Moby, genuinely flummoxed by Bowie's request. "I feel uncomfortable going on after Bowie, what with him being my ultimate hero."
But this is indicative of the new Bowie as well. In a recent Entertainment Weekly cover story, the thin, white duke stated quite seriously how rock's young must usurp its elders. Quite cheerfully, Bowie pointed at Moby at being the young one to best take him on. "I'm not that young," laughs Moby. "And age, especially [in] someone as intelligent as Bowie, always has something. But I guess it's all about youthful enthusiasm. Who knows when someone will come for me?"
Area2, featuring Moby, David Bowie, Busta Rhymes, Carl Cox, John Digweed, DJ Tiesto, DJ Tim Skinner, Blue Man Group, arrives Tue., July 30, 3:30 p.m., $35-$75, at the Tweeter Center, Mickle Blvd. and Riverside Drive, Camden, 215-336-2000, www.tweetercenter.com/philadelphia.
