Richard Melville Hall grew up a punk in Connecticut, but as Moby he’s become better known for putting ambient, uplifting, techno synth-pop in the charts. Wait for Me is his latest album, knocked out quickly in his Lower Manhattan loft and all the better for its methodology. But other than this, and the fact he’s a slap-headed vegan, what else is there to know about Moby?
1 He doesn’t ever keep a business plan
‘Whatever success I’ve had has been arbitrary; never planned. I never expected to have a record contract or sell any records. Everything I’ve done has just been accidental, which has led to me making some OK decisions and a lot of really bad decisions as well.’
2 One of those bad decisions was 2005’s Hotel…
‘When Play first came out, journalists didn’t review it, it didn’t get radio play; and then it became this big successful record and – I hate to admit this – I found myself liking the fame. I bought into it. So Hotel was me trying to make a record that EMI would get behind and, embarrassing as it is, perpetuate the fame I had. I think it’s the thing I’m most ashamed of.’
3 …And he’ll never make another record like it
‘With Hotel, I was really focusing on the production and the engineering. I ended up with a technically perfect record I didn’t want to listen to. Now that nobody buys music anyway, it’s emancipating. I realised a record that might sound great on the radio is not a record you want to listen to at home.’
4 He thinks a record is like a house guest
‘What sounds good on the radio is really loud kick drums and loud snare drums, when everything’s bombastic and in your face. It’s the equivalent of a house guest who screams all the time. A record is sort of like a house guest: you want a house guest who is quiet and thoughtful or with interesting opinions – who’s not screaming.’
5 You won’t recognise a single voice on his new album
‘If you do, I’ll be amazed. They’re basically friends of mine who have really nice voices. Amelia Zirin-Brown, who sings on ‘Pale Horses’ is a burlesque artist who goes by the name Lady Rizo. I hate working with famous people. Famous people are a pain in the ass.’
6 He doesn’t like his own voice
‘I wish I could sing. I don’t technically have a terrible voice, but it’s certainly not as good as most of my friends. Whenever I hear myself on a record, it just reminds me I’m not a very good singer.’
7 He’s not always entirely sure where his samples come from
‘I go to the record store and buy a lot of old records and I sample them, and I forget to write down where the sample comes from. I put out the record and, more often than not, I don’t know where the sample came from. It’s happened a lot in my past, where I sample something and just wait to get sued. I follow the old adage, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”’
8 But the choral bit in ‘A Seated Night’ came from a cab
‘I was in a taxi, and the Haitian taxi driver was listening to a church service recorded in Port-au-Prince. He’s listening to it on this crummy Radio Shack 1975 cassette player. I decided to make a piece of music that had that same sort of beautiful but disconcerted, washy atmosphere. One of my regrets was that I didn’t ask him what it was. Now, I’m a little bit smarter about that sort of thing, and I’d just give him five or ten bucks for the cassette.’
9 So-called nerds have nothing on this Trekkie
‘Every time you read an interview with a supermodel, they’re always like, “Oh, I was a such nerd”, I resent that a little bit. I was in the A/V club; I used to eat my lunch in a closet. Some people are nerds with a small ‘n’. My friends and I, we were capital ‘N’s. We went to conventions and argued the finer points of Star Trek plotlines. Hard. Core. Nerds.’
Wait for Me is available now in all good record stores, or for download from www.7digital.com.
