INTERVIEW: Moby
- Robin Lapid
Listening to a Moby album is like a lesson in Learning to Love Schizophrenia. He has long been known to many as the human face of techno, but as a hard-core music lover with influences ranging from Bad Brains to Bach, it is hard to pin the man down. On albums like Everything Is Wrong or Animal Rights, you can hear anything from ambient to hard-core punk from one track to the next.
Moby is a prolific artist, to say the least. Apart from his own albums (including numerous releases under pseudonyms), he has remixed songs for the likes of Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Aerosmith, and Blur (his favorite being a "Beat It" remix for Michael Jackson). He was set to produce the upcoming Guns 'n Roses album, but not wanting to move from New York City to Los Angeles for 8 months, Moby is now devoting the majority of his time to working on his next album. Moby's "re-version" for the James Bond Theme has been making the rounds of alternative stations, and can also be heard on I Like To Score (coming out in the U.S. on Oct. 21), a compilation of songs he's done for film and television.
His personality is as much a part of his music, something for which he's taken a lot of flak. The release of his last album, Animal Rights, was more industrial/punk than his trademark electronic sound, leaving many of his techno fanbase crying traitor. But what can't be denied is how much a role *all* of his influences play in his music. His set during the recent Big Top tour (an electronic-dance "rave," American-style) was befitting of Moby's personality, an unseemly, seamless contrariness of moods and emotions. His unflinching honesty with his musical output, and his efforts at reflecting his human side in all its diversity, is what ultimately makes his music complex, vital, and alive.
I caught up with Moby the day after his 32nd birthday, at Big Top's Oakland stop. He had time before his 1 a.m. set (and a quick nap) to expand on his renewed love for techno and his vegan, Christ-loving lifestyle.
Consumable: How's the tour going?
Moby: For me it's going really well. It's the first time in a couple of years that I've gone out and played an all exclusively electronic dance set. The only problems are that ticket prices are too high, because most of the bands on the tour no one's ever heard of before. What tends to happen is 808 State plays, and I play, and everyone goes home. Tonight it should be fine because it's San Francisco and it's a weekend. But in some of the smaller cities we've done during the week, I'll play and be done around 1 o'clock [in the morning], and then everyone just disappears - the bands that come after me are playing to empty houses.
C: How do you feel about the backlash you got from fans and critics for Animal Rights, when you decided to go for a more industrial, punk sound?
Moby: It kind of made sense to me. But at the same time, when I was making Animal Rights, I also made the Voodoo Child album, which is an all-electronic, very quiet record, and I was making a house music record, and I was doing dance remixes, and I was writing classical music for movies. So what tends to happen, is artists or musicians get judged on the record they make every 16 months as their sole creative output. But I do all these different things, so when I made Animal Rights , I thought it was just one part of the whole picture.
Hopefully it will all be seen as a cohesive mass. I think, in a few years, if anyone takes the trouble to do so, they look back and they'll see everything, all the records I've made all in relation to each other, and it'll all make sense. But when it's happening, it might seem a little confusing to people.
C: Are you working on your next album right now?
Moby: Mm-hm. That's why I wanna go home.
C: What's that album going to be like?
Moby: Stylistically, I don't really know. I want it to be an emotional album. I Like To Score is coming out in October, but the record I'm working on now, I think it's much more in line with what people would expect a Moby album to be like. I think with Animal Rights , I kind of confused people more than I wanted to.
C: Was it intentional? I know that in your music and your personal beliefs, you welcome and promote an open-mindedness.
Moby: I like lots of different types of music and I don't see why I should make one kind at the exclusion of anything else. With Animal Rights , I really didn't want to confuse people by making, like, a punk rock heavy metal record with really quiet classical interludes. I think it's a remarkable record, and I think in the context of everything else I've done and hopefully will do in the future, it will make a lot of sense then. But I didn't mean to confuse people quite as seriously as I did.
C: So you have a bigger plan with each album you put out?
Moby: Not an intentional bigger plan. It's kind of like, say if you're married to someone - in the morning they're in a really foul mood. Well, you don't assume they're going to be in a foul mood for the rest of their life. You take that as part of their personality. There are different facets to different people's personalities, and it works through an artistic level as well. If you know someone for ten years, you realize that sometimes they're quiet, sometimes they're loud, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're jerks. It all combines into a cohesive whole, and I would hope that my creative output reflects that.
As a human being and a musician, I'm comfortable enough with ambiguity, that I don't feel a need to constrain myself and say, "Okay, this is what I am." I don't see any problem with loving classical music and also loving punk rock and speed metal.
C: Do you think that the music you put out is intimately connected to who you are as a person?
Moby: Yeah, I'm not quite sure how, but it all comes from me. And I tend to be more expressive through the music that I make than the way I live my life. You can reveal a lot more through making music [than you can by living life]. A lot of the music I make has a sort of "epic" quality to it, and it's really hard to live an "epic" life (laughs). I'm sort of like, shy and retiring.
C: What do you think of the techno music coming out now?
Moby: I can't generalize it. Some of it I really like, and some of it I can't stand. The thing I think that I miss is that it tends now to veer into a more esoteric sound. In like 1989 to 1992, it was really uplifting and joyful. It tended to be like a techno anthem. There don't seem to be as many today. It tends to be more underground, more esoteric now. But I really miss the anthems.
C: What kind of music have you been listening to lately?
Moby: Classical music, and a lot of speed metal. I really like stuff like the Toadies. And my own music. Classical music, speed metal, and my own music.
C: You mentioned recently that you went to a John Fogerty concert, and that you liked the fact that he was a "populist," and played just the hits, the songs that the audience wanted to hear. Do you feel the same pressure when you play shows?
Moby: I just feel like, I want to make people happy. Especially when you can do that, when I have the ability to make people happy through the music I make. A lot of bands don't want to play old stuff, they just want to play new stuff. As an audience member, you tend to want familiarity. You're paying money to hear songs you love, and I'm overjoyed to provide that service.
C: What was the audience reaction like when you toured for Animal Rights?
Moby: We toured for five months in Europe, and the response was quite good. At this point, I had an epiphany where I realized I don't want to be that self-indulgent to my creative output.
C: Do you think you'll ever do another album like Animal Rights ?
Moby: I'd probably do it under a different name, like, not put it out as "a new Moby album."
C: Were you trying to gain a new audience with that album?
Moby: I was just making a record that I wanted to make. It never crossed my mind that I would alienate old fans or earn new fans. I'm bound to alienate people [in putting out the music that I do], but you can't make people happy all the time.
C: How did you become a Christian?
Moby: In my own weird way I love Christ and I love the teachings of Christ. The word "Christian" can mean a lot of different things. In Macedonia it means a Russian Orthodox Christianity. If you're in Ireland it means something different altogether. There's so many different expressions of what Christianity is and they have nothing to do with each other. I prefer to just think of myself as (searches for word) a Christ-liker.
C: Does that play into your music at all?
Moby: Oh yeah. I'm not quite sure how, but it does. Hopefully it affects my music in a cohesive, organic fashion.
C: You have an internet account, right?
Moby: I did many years ago, but I haven't been online for a while.
C: On the rec.music.christian newsgroup, a lot of people tend to see you as a sort of role model, and some people tend to think it's wrong that you condemn the Christian right.
Moby: I don't really condemn the Christian right. If somebody considers themselves a conservative Christian, I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is judgementalism. The conservative Christian ideology doesn't make sense to me. I don't feel it has a foundation in the teachings of Christ. Everyone's welcome to believe whatever they want to believe. It's not my place to condemn someone for their belief structure. But it does rub me the wrong way when someone calls themselves a Christian and their ideology doesn't seem to have much foundation in the teachings of Christ.
I read an interview with Ralph Reed, and he's talking about the strength of the family unit, and personal American values, and I'm not saying those things are bad, but they really don't have anything to do with Christ. So, when I criticize the conservative Christian right, [it's because] I feel that they're leading people astray. A farmer from Kentucky, what do they know about Robert Mapplethorpe? So it's really easy to say, "Those evil homosexuals in the big city, or those sinners, or those unwed mothers." But the truth is, I think what Christ wanted us to strive for was compassion and nonjudgementalism.
C: So do you promote that message when you put out your music?
Moby: Yeah, primarily through the essays that I write, and in giving interviews. My goal is never to try to convert anyone to anything or convince anyone of anything. I just want to share my opinions, and hopefully people will share their opinions back, and you create a dialogue. I've been wrong about so many things in my life that I certainly don't think I'm right now. I believe what I believe at this moment. It's all subject to change depending on [the beliefs that I have] and the contact I have with other people.
C: Do you feel that techno music is going back to those ideals that made you get into it in the first place, the celebration and enthusiasm of music?
Moby: It seems like, with the younger people involved in it now, there's a real celebratory quality to it. The gregarious aspect of it and the celebration aspect of it, that's what I love about it. The music now is very uplifting.
