DJ? Artist? Producer? Author? Restaurant Mogul? There isn”t a single title that can be used to encompass the multitalented genius known as Moby. Taking a break between a promotional tour and a concert tour, Moby took a few minutes to talk to us about his new album “Hotel,” the joys of Teany and political activism.
RS: So you”re in New York right now?
Moby: I”ve been doing this four-month long promotional tour. The promotional tour ends today and then tomorrow the concert tour starts.
RS: So you don”t get to enjoy your house and your restaurant too much, do you?
Moby: I live right near the restaurant Teany, so I go there pretty much every day. I have this nice house upstate and in the true bourgeois fashion, I haven”t been there in months.
RS: Where did the idea for Teany come from?
Moby: When I was twenty-one years old I went to France, and I was a really pretentious American. I was the cliché with a striped sweater and my beret. One of my favorite things to do was to go hang out in this tea shop called La Bouillante and in the back of my mind had this little dream about opening a vegetarian tea shop. My friend Kelly was working at Human Rights Watch, and before that she had worked in the Clinton White house and she wanted to do something different, so we opened Teany. It’’s done surprisingly well considering neither one of us has a clue what we”re doing.
RS: That’’s always the best way. Since you eat there every day, what’’s your favorite item that you eat there?
Moby: My favorite thing on the menu is the Pambagnia sandwich. It’’s ciabata bread with olive garlic tapinade, roast red peppers, fresh basil, infused oils, fresh tomatoes and chopped red onions. It’’s really fantastic.
RS: Awesome. Let’’s talk about Hotel a little bit. What was your inspiration for the album?
Moby: My basic inspiration is trying to make music that I love in the simple hope that other people might love it as well. In the last couple of years I”ve had a few relationships that didn”t work out though they were very loving relationships infused with a lot of attraction and respect, but they didn”t work out. So I think that’’s the recurring theme to the album, relationships where even though you might love the other person, you know in your heart of hearts it’’s not going to work out.
RS: And that’’s like the concept of a hotel?
Moby: When you”re in a relationship and you know it’’s not going to work out and you”re not going to stay and, a hotel is kind of like that. A hotel is a place where you”re there temporarily, just that notion of inhabiting a relationship temporarily. Our lives are very brief and we”re here on this earth for a temporary period of time, and so I guess that kind of influenced the direction as well.
RS: How do you write your songs?
Moby: Well a lot of the songs on this record were written in an old classic manner, just sitting in my living room playing acoustic guitar. In the past I”ve written a lot with synthesizers and drum machines. Some songs on this record that are much more electronic, but most of the songs on the record were just written with acoustic guitar.
RS: I”ve heard a lot of people mention that this album, has no samples on it. Was this a conscious decision when you started working on the album?
Moby: When I was working on the record I ended up writing around three hundred songs, and some of those songs did have samples on them, but the reason I chose these fourteen that ended up on the record was just that these fourteen were my favorite of the songs I”d written. So it wasn”t specifically a concerted effort to move away from using samples, it was more just the desire to include these fourteen songs on the record.
RS: So what will happen to the other two hundred and eighty-six songs?
Moby: Well some might come out as the B sides and some might get released under different names. Maybe I”ll make pseudonymous projects. Maybe I”ll give some to other artists. Some might just get thrown away, I have no idea. I”ve got, altogether, around four to five thousand unreleased songs.
RS: So basically if you pull a Tupac and fake your death, they”ll be albums coming for years.
Moby: Yes, you could put out an album every day for the next ten years.
RS: How important do you think sampling is for electronic music?
Moby: From my perspective, the ultimate goal in making any kind of music is to make music that affects the listener. Whether that means playing loud punk rock, playing disco, or using a sampler or live instruments, I don”t really have any allegiance to any style of music. I don”t think I have any allegiance to the way music is made. My allegiance is to the way music can affect me. I”m happy to use any tools that make music that hopefully will be powerful and affective.
RS: Of all the voices that you feature in your recordings, which has been your favorite to work with?
Moby: Let me think. On the last album 18, I did a song with Angie Stone and I have to say her. She’’s such a fantastic singer that working with her was so easy and she’’s quite a professional. So she’’s probably my favorite voice to work with.
RS: Is it more challenging to work with your own voice?
Moby: I don”t really think of myself as a singer, I just really enjoy singing. I think that my voice has a sort of naive, vulnerable quality that suits the music that I make. I”d rather work with other singers, I just really enjoy singing.
RS: What is your favorite remix that you have done over the past fifteen years?
Moby: Probably, the remix of Brian Eno’’s “Fractal Zoom” that I did in 1992, I really liked that. I”ve done two David Bowie remixes, “Sunday” and “Dead Man Walking”. David Bowie is my favorite musician of all time, so any opportunity I”ve had to work with him has been really exciting.
RS: It’’s funny you mention Brian Eno, because one of the site writers mentioned “Fractal Zoom” as his favorite thing you”ve done. And are there any stories behind that?
Moby: Brian Eno, I can”t think of anyone else in the last fifty years who’’s influenced me more than Brian Eno - from Roxy Music to producing Devo and the Talking Heads to making his own ambient records to making “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.” So when I was asked to do a Brian Eno remix I was so excited. I tried to keep my cool when I was talking on the phone and pretending I was very blasé and whatever but the moment I hung-up the phone I ran around my apartment like a squirrel on amphetamines.
RS: I guess that a lot of people would have that same reaction talking to you on the phone.
Moby: I don”t know. I have made some OK records, but I”m certainly no Brian Eno.
RS: Are you currently working on any remixes?
Moby: I”ve been spending the last year working on finishing this record and working on a lot of political stuff. Then the last four months have been promotion and all that and the next nine months are going to be spend touring, so I haven”t had the opportunity to remixes for anyone else. But maybe when all this ends and the touring stops, I”ll have time to maybe do some remixes for other people.
RS: Do you usually choose remixers for your own songs, like Abe Duque and Super Discount on the first single?
Moby: It’’s half and half. There are people I have chosen and sometimes it’’s people the record company have chosen. A lot of times what”ll happen is someone from the record company will recommend someone and we”ll end up agreeing.
RS: Can you talk at all about the rumors that Axl Rose asked you to produce some of his long-delayed Chinese Democracy record?
Moby: I spent a couple of days in the studio with him, and it was very interesting. I”m flown out to Los Angeles to sit in the studio with Axl. I know this is going to sound odd, but I found him to be really sort of a sensitive, slightly troubled person. I wish him well and I hope that at some point they finish the record and that it’’s great.
RS: So as part of your tour are you performing live or are you DJing in addition?
Moby: Right now, I”m just going to be performing. It’’s a six-piece band and I”ll be playing guitar, singing, playing some keyboards and aybe some percussion.
RS: So the Ultra performance, was that like a warm-up for the show?
Moby: Kind of. I hadn”t played at Winter Music Conference in a few years and it just seemed like a great thing to do for twentieth anniversary. The show that we did with Ultra was not too representative of what my own live show will be, because that was more dance-orientated. The show that I do on my own is a lot longer as well. Ultra was fun and it was such a remarkable bill.
RS: Was it better than DJ Moby performing their Hit OK?
Moby: Yes, that was not exactly a high point in my career.
RS: That was your first Winter Music Conference experience?
Moby: I don”t know, I can”t remember if it was the Winter Music Conference or right around the Winter Music Conference. It was definitely in Miami at the Cameo Theatre that’’s now a Crobar.
RS: I have to ask this, how do you respond to the morons who call you a sell-out for licensing your music for commercials?
Moby: I respond in a few different ways. First off, they might be right. Just because I”ve done something doesn”t mean that I”m convinced that I”ve done the right thing. But my feeling when I license music is that if I make a record and I”m proud of it, I want people to hear it - so I have to avail myself to sort of untraditional means to get people to hear my music. One strange thing to me is that people will get upset with me for licensing my music to advertisements, but yet we all buy products that are advertised. What I find a little bit strange is when a journalist who writes for a magazine that gets most of its money from ad revenue, will then criticize me for licensing my music to advertising.
RS: Well, going in that direction, I personally think most critics suck right now. Do you read your own press when people write about you?
Moby: At this point, honestly I don”t because it seems to arbitrary. When people review my records, half the time they”re not even listening to the music. There are a lot of journalists out there who, for whatever reason, just don”t like me. There was a review of Hotel in The New York Times which wasn”t even about the music, it was just a really vitriolic attack against me. I”d rather spend my time making dinner with my friends and working on music than reading opinions of people who hate my guts.
RS: Do you think it’’s related at all to this whole notion that dance music needs to be underground and when someone is more successful we have to tear them down?
Moby: I don”t know where it comes from. To be honest with you, if you”re around for long enough and you have a degree of success, at some point the critics are going to hate you, it’’s just kind of how it works unless you”re Radiohead. I just feel like I have to keep going. I make music and try not to worry too much about what the critics say and hope that the people I care about like the music that I make.
RS: Awesome. Is there a single record that made you fall in love with dance music?
Moby: Let me think. I could think of like three or four. The first would probably be Donna Summer’’s “I Feel Love.” I remember hearing that on the radio in the 70s and just being amazed by it. Then what made me fall in love with house music was the Todd Terry record “A Day in the Life.” Probably the record that made me fall in love with rave culture was Bizarre Inc’’s “Playing With Knives.” Then a fourth one would be “Strings of Life” by Derrick May. Those four would be the records that either made me fall in love with dance music or cemented my love for dance music.
RS: Coming back to Bizarre Inc, do you miss those old-school rave days?
Moby: Oh absolutely. Playing big, happy, euphoric techno to ten thousand people who are all smiling and throwing their hands in the air and dancing like crazy, who wouldn”t miss that?
RS: A few more random questions sent in by your fans. Have you even talked to Angelo Badalamenti about “Go?”
Moby: Yes, I did actually. In 1992, I was with a friend of mine who knew Angelo, and we were in the lower east side and Angelo was driving home to New Jersey. Angelo drove by, met us and told me that he really loved what I had done with Go.
RS: Very cool. Do you enjoy hearing your music in films?
Moby: Yes, I do. I like hearing my music in films because when they”re mixing it to the film, they usually do a good job. I”m always very flattered that someone would choose to use my music in a movie. There’’s so much music that could be used, the fact that they”ve chosen mine, its very exciting and flattering.
RS: There was a scene in the movie Heat when there’’s that change at the end of God Moving Over the Face of the Waters… That was just a magical moment for the person who wrote the question. Do you remember seeing that on screen for the first time?
Moby: Yes, I saw Heat in a movie theatre on 19th and Broadway with my friend Damien. It was interesting because Heat was an example of a movie that, when it was released, the critics just didn”t get it. When Heat was released it got really bad reviews and it didn”t do very well, but in the ten years that it’’s been out it’’s come to be this almost revered iconic movie. So it once again proves to me that I shouldn”t always take critics” reviews too seriously. But I do remember seeing it at 19th and Broadway with my friend Damien and just thinking that Michael Mann had done a really wonderful job putting the music in there.
RS: So do you think that the world will become a better place or it will only get worse?
Moby: I think that the world overall is becoming a better place. Obviously I worked very hard on the John Kerry campaign and I support all the progressive left-wing organizations, but one thing I found really interesting was that in the last election, that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney said that they supported the civil unions for gay couples. I thought that was kind of remarkable that you”d have right-wing Republicans basically saying that they support civil unions for gay couples. I mean obviously it’’s not where we want to be, but could you imagine Richard Nixon in 1971 saying that he supported civil unions for gay couples?
RS: I couldn”t imagine him even acknowledging that gay couples exist.
Moby: For Dick Cheney sort of like acknowledging that is daughter is gay and that he’’s proud of her and she works on his campaign. So it’’s sometimes easy to get focused on the bad, negative aspects of the United States under the Bush administration, and I”m certainly no fan of the Bush administration, but I think that sometimes we need to sort of pat ourselves on the back and say that we”ve actually come quite far.
RS: What would you encourage people out there to do to get involved politically?
Moby: It really depends where someone lives, what their socioeconomic status is, how much free time they have, and what their background is. I think each person should ask themselves what do they think they can offer. Can they offer money or grassroots organizing? Should they run for office or volunteer for different political action committees? I mean everyone should probably do something different and figure out what they can do best.
Full lenght of exclusive live performance from Moby - Live at Loveparade Dortmund 2008
Date: 20/07/2008
Filesize: 550.2 MB
Source: TV
Resolution: 704×400
Format: PAL x264
Deinterlace: Progressive
Video Bitrate: 3733 kbit
Audio Source: TVA
Audio Format: MP2
Audio Bitrate: 256kbit (CBR; 48 kHz)
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