Philosophy, perception, and a little bit of the Natural Blues

An interview with Moby

by Jaysen Buterin

You would think that a Monday morning that starts off with your car running out of gas a block from your house would only get worse. Quite the contrary, it got much better, because later that afternoon I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking on the phone with Moby, the opening act of the MTV Campus Invasion on April 5. Moby, 34, was born Richard Melville Hall and, as an infant, was nicknamed in honour of his illustrious literary great-great-grand uncle, to whom his middle name refers. Moby is a vegan, he loves the teachings of Christ, he's an egalitarian intellectual, and he's never heard a Garth Brooks record. His most current release, the spiritual and irresistably transcendent "Play" has received numerous critic's honours, as well as being nominated for two Grammys.

OFF! - Hey Moby

Moby - Hi

OFF! - How are you

Moby - I'm fine thank you

OFF! - I really appreciate you taking the time to do this

Moby - Oh, my pleasure

OFF! - Being a kind of iconicised figure in the electronic music world, do you think that it has taken the natural evolution that people had originally envisioned, or has it surprised them?

Moby - I think that the interesting thing about electronic music is it's become such a broad and disparate genre. I mean really, if you want to define electronic music as music that's created electronically through sort of unconventional means, hip-hop is electronic music, most R&B is electronic music; drum and bass, house music, techno, trance. Bjork is an electronic artist, Massive Attack, Portishead, you know, those are all electronic artists. I think it's just interesting what a diverse genre it's become.

OFF! - Do you think the juxtaposition, if not marriage, of the dance & drug culture is something more perpetuated by the various media, or is it a relationship where one inherently feeds off the other?

Moby - I like electronic music, but I don't necessarily think of myself as just being a dance artist. I mean on this album, there's a lot of convention, there's a lot of acoustic guitar and drums and piano in there. So, regarding dance culture, I'm sort of involved in it, but not really. As far as speaking about the drug culture, I mean, certainly the use of drugs is quite prevalent in the dance world, then again I'm not one to speak of it because I don't take drugs and I'm also not that heavily involved in the dance scene.

OFF! - As a performer and an artist, do you perceive a difference with the electronic music culture, and it's influence/presence in America as opposed to the UK?

Moby - Oh yeah, I mean look at the top albums in the UK and half of them are electronic dance records. Even mine, even though mine isn't exclusively that. Electronic music is kind of like soccer, in a sense that it's huge everywhere except in the United States. In the United States soccer is not that big a deal, but you go to England and Europe and it's a huge deal. I'm not saying I'm a football fan, I'm making an analogy - electronic dance music in Europe is huge! A band like Limp Bizkit, in Europe, couldn't get arrested. You know, they've probably sold more records in Boise, Idaho than they have in all of Europe. And stuff like Kid Rock or like Country Western, you know, stuff that's huge in the United States doesn't sell anything outside the United States. No one cares. And in most cases I don't think they should care, a lot of it's really worthless.

OFF! - Not a big Kid Rock fan?

Moby - Actually I like Kid Rock, but a lot of the other rap-metal stuff leaves me kind of cold.

OFF! - It seems that the fusion of musical genre, such as rap-metal really seems to be selling lately.

Moby - I mean when I was at the Grammies, I noticed this new phenomena which is Country Western, it seems like all the female Country Western artists look like porn stars.

OFF! - (Laughing hysterically) Like who?

Moby - Like the Dixie Chicks. When I was walking into the Grammies they were right behind me, and I thought they were Vivid Vixens.

OFF! - How do you see the rave scene in America as an influence on electronic music in America? (raves versus clubs)

Moby - Like I said, I love electronic music and I like dance culture, but I'm not exclusively involved in it. And I've been away for the last year, so I really don't know.

OFF! - As you've acquired a formidable reputation as a remixer, and esteeming and imagining the eclectic spectrum of musicians you've seen, is there one performer or band, that you've always wanted to work with?

Moby - I love working with people who can sing well. So I'd love to work with, take someone like Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston and remix them. You know, take a Mariah Carey song that I didn't really like and turn it into something that I do like.

OFF! - Any plans to work with the Dixie Chicks on a remix track?

Moby - I have never even heard their music. Half the thing is, like I look at the American charts and 90% of the stuff in there, I just have no idea what it is.

OFF! - I've managed to escape without hearing them yet as well, although a friend of mine is always threatening to force me to listen to it.

Moby - I mean, stuff like that, I don't even know. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not good, I have no idea. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we were talking about Garth Brooks and he's sold what, like 90 million records in his life? I don't know a single person who's even heard a Garth Brooks song. Maybe it's cause I live in New York, I don't know. It's just weird, there's all this music out there that I don't even know about.

OFF! - Do you see corporate entities, such as MTV, as a hinderance or an aid? As something like a vehicle to deliver a message to a broader spectrum, or simply trying to cash in on whatever is popular at the time?

Moby - Well, it's kind of like, if you want to come to Manhattan, at some point you have to cross a body of water, because Manhattan is an island. So it means you have to take a ferry, take a bridge or take a tunnel. So I sort of see MTV as being the body of water, you know, like it's there. Whether you like it, whether you don't like it, it doesn't really matter. So whether I see MTV as a hinderance or as a positive thing...it's still there. It's like the weather.

OFF! - Given your literary heritage, your musical status, and your philosophical & ontological foundations, what do you think people would be most surprised to find out about you?

Moby - I think what people would tend to be surprised about is that I'm really a very open minded, tolerant person. I'm not this rigid, Puritanical figure, boy, if anything, far from it.

OFF! - I know one time you said that "if people actually knew the depths of your love for crummy pop songs, they'd be ashamed on your behalf".

Moby - It's changed. That was a few years ago, you know, when the Spice Girls first came out. Now I'm just so fed up with the whole world of lowest common denominator pop music.

OFF! - I was just curious because I know lately I've been harbouring a propensity for 80's rock that I can't seem to explain. I thought maybe we might have some of the same interests.

Moby - I mean, I like everything. I'm just getting so tired of these formulated, manufactured boy bands and girl bands and whatever. It's just starting to turn me off.

OFF! - An equally compelling part of each of your releases are the essays ensconced within the liner notes. While you say that the essays are not really related to the music, do you find that the various motifs you address associate themselves with that particular album?

Moby - Well I do everything by myself. I write the songs and play the instruments and music, and write the essays, so certainly they're all related because they're all coming from one person, but I don't know if there's a specific correlation between the content of the essays and the content of the album.

OFF! - On "Play" your first essay on fundamentalism particularly resonated in my mind. It seems that in a world that expounds upon itself technologically, some people still feel compelled to think only in absolutes, hence justifying and rationalising anything they don't understand into one category or the other. Do you think that humanity will ever transcend the need to explain the chaos of a world that we struggle with daily to define?

Moby - I think most people are comfortable with ambiguity. I just think there are a few bad apples out there that want to see the world in very unambiguous, absolutist terms. You know, whether they're absolute Christians or absolute Muslims or absolutist culture, people, or whatever, but nonetheless, I think most people are pretty comfortable with ambiguity, even if they don't know what it is.

OFF! - You seem to regard the American prison system, in your second essay on "Play", with an air of disdain. Do you find it ironic that America, as a paradigm of democracy and a staple of leadership within the visionary ideals of the "civilised" Western world, antithesises the individual rights, particularly with its prisoners?

Moby - What troubles me is the fact that most people consider themselves to be good, caring, considerate people, but deep down, everyone's a sadist. You know, it's like you ask your average person on the street what they they think about the death penalty, and everyone loves the death penalty, and it's just so cruel. Cruelty and suffering is cruelty and suffering no matter who is experiencing it. Even if someone's done an awful, awful thing inflicting cruelty and suffering on them is still sadistic.

OFF! - Do you think some people view it in an Old Testament sense, where it's an eye for an eye kind of view.

Moby - I find it particularly ironic when people call themselves Christians but yet they espouse vindictive views. I mean the essence of Christ's teachings is forgiveness and compassion and mercy.

OFF! - Do you think that certain entities, be it the faceless government or individual factions within it, belie and negate the autonomy and solipsistic potential that each person has? Or is it a kind of necessary evil, an angel on one shoulder, devil on the other?

Moby - I think a lot of it in a way, is perception. You know, if people perceive that the world is run by these faceless entities, these inhumane and faceless entities, then they're going to feel that their own autonomy is compromised. But in general faceless, bureaucratic entities are made up of individuals. I think it's the way that people involved in the entities perceive themselves and the entities they work for, and the way that the rest of us perceive them.

OFF! - Are you more of a spiritual person or a religious person? Or do you think there's a difference between the two, are they just words?

Moby - I don't know. I don't think of myself as being religious, you know, I don't ascribe to any one specific religious orientation.

OFF! - It seems a lot of the things that I've read about you, interviews and bio's and such, allude you with having a very strong background in Christianity, of being a positive icon in the Christian scene.

Moby - But I'm not. I mean I love Christ, I love the teachings of Christ, but I don't think of myself as a Christian. That's too specific and too rigid a definition for me. So I don't know, I wouldn't really know how to describe myself.

OFF! - I read once that you like to take your clothes off in a public a lot. Do you still do that?

Moby - Not too often, no, but I don't really have any shame. If it wasn't illegal to be naked in public I'd probably be naked a lot more.

OFF! - Seen any good movies lately, or have you been too busy touring?

Moby - I see a lot of strange movies on the bus, like a lot of movies from the 80's, like Road House. But I haven't really seen anything lately that's knocked my socks off.

OFF! - If you could rewrite Thomas More's Utopia, how would you encapsulate the ideal society, in a now 21st century modernised setting?

Moby - Hmmmm, that's a really good question. I think that essentially it's a matter of... My biggest hope for humanity is to learn to understand themselves better, and learn to understand what motivates their behaviour. Because, I think as human beings we're kind of clueless. You know, we feel like humanity was something that was minted a couple hundred years ago, and the truth is human behaviour is part of a legacy that's billions of years old. And our behaviour is motivated by evolutionary factors, and a lot of times we're not aware of that. I think that contributes to great lack of self-awareness on our own part, and a great lack of understanding and compassion in the way that we deal with other people.