Defend the indefensible/POO: Moby - Play

fumbling over my keyboard trying to figure out which cynical/sarcastic point to make here

- this album is missing perennial favorite "theme from jason bourne"
- no songs with Moby vocals can be a favorite because they're bad
- really though it always sounds like he recorded a scratch track for someone else to sing on the release

going to pick "Natural Blues" because it combines one of the better (if more obvious) samples and he figured out how to use more than one keyboard preset

is Gwen Stefani on the album version of "South Side"?

I admittedly listened to this album a million times and the financial/hype boost Moby got from this allowed him to put on a festival tour that had a pretty good lineup. It was one of the first music experiences I traveled with friends to see, so I can't be mad

flappy, nope

although if you purchased it later, I think they just wholesale swapped the original for the Gwen version

There's nothing indefensible about this album at all - I last listened to it earlier this year and it still holds up, IMO. Voted for 'Porcelain'

did anyone else read Moby's 'essays' from the cd booklet?

http://absolutelypointless.net/cerealdog/moby.html

I was too mean, but the staggering overselling of the album really overshadows the music in the long view and the songs with Moby vocals are really the heart of the album, and this was really the point where he figured out how to get his guitar-playing stage persona working in harmony with his piano house musing.

The sample-laden pieces are cloying but lifted the profile of the album and the endless licensing wore it out.

soref, I am sure I read those once or twice but, oh man, Moby's personal musings have always quickly veered into "guy having opinions that are mostly agreeable but quickly move into territory where you wish he'd realize he's famous now and doesn't need a chip that large on his shoulder"

first time I read about veganism

that's pretty cool tbh

I must have heard this album a thousand times when I was 11 years old, seemed great at the time, seems quite dated now, perhaps because that style of sentimental sampling would become so ubiquitous in commercial contexts in the internet age

also it just doesn't seem as impressive to me now, I can see through those samples and chord changes in a way I could not at all as a pre-teen, back then I just thought wow these are great sounds

voting porcelain

I read Moby's book last year and really enjoyed it, which prompted me to go and relisten to a bunch of the music he recorded over the same period. I rather like this album. It has an appealing, open simplicity - there's nothing very clever about it, and he rinses the same basic idea over and over again, but it's nice, and sometimes I want to listen to nice music. Can't remember the track name, but I like the one that's just two string chords over a kick drum and nothing else.

first time I read about veganism

― ogmor, Wednesday, December 13, 2017 1:48 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too

no nevermind it was everything is wrong notes when i first read about veganism

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I'd love to know exactly how much money he made from this album -- he was certainly smarter than other pre-Y2K pop stars who didn't see Napster coming.

Trivia: Margaret Fielder (of Moonshake and Laika) told me she was the one who convinced Moby to go vegan, back in his Connecticut days. I think they later were in a band together in NY. I was a little surprised she didn't make it into the book (iirc).

As well as adverts does anyone remember 'Play' tracks creeping into fictional TV shows much? e.g. the X-Files used 'My Weakness' during a Mulder sort of finds his sister scene (iirc). Another money-spinner there.

Huh, I guess she and Moby were also in some lineup of Ultra Vivid Scene! You can see Moby here around 3:26:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aXF9DG9FGo

As well as adverts does anyone remember 'Play' tracks creeping into fictional TV shows much? e.g. the X-Files used 'My Weakness' during a Mulder sort of finds his sister scene (iirc). Another money-spinner there.

i think this album sounds pretty of its time but i like it. it's almost like a weird unintentional counterpart to ferraro's far side virtual or something. even though the samples are supposed to be old/soulful it has this weird digital plastic sheen to it like the sonic equivalent of the blobby, optimistic futurism that characterized early 2000s design. it hints at the emptiness and capitalist sheen of that time too, with the beautiful old spirituals repurposed as detergent ads. it feels like the opening chapters of gibson's pattern recognition where the protagonist is just drifting through this hypercorporate depersonalized london of non-places.

moby would despise that analysis i'm sure but i've always found that time period weirdly alluring so i really dig this record.

this album changed my life when i was in middle school tbh

Find My Baby was my favorite at the time, I think, but the tracks I'd actively want to listen to again are Porcelain, Natural Blues, and Inside

"Whispering Wind" from the Natural Blues single is legitimately great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFnPV7JdaLM

this is a good album

there's nothing very clever about it, and he rinses the same basic idea over and over again, but it's nice, and sometimes I want to listen to nice music.

otm

vote for the one which was used in the best advert (they've all got at least one!)

offtm

Mmm, whatever 8-bit quantisation they did to The Mercy Seat for that video above made it about three times better, it sounds as heavy as All Tomorrow's Parties there.

I can't say I listen to this much anymore but I don't quite understand the contempt for it. You people are weird.

Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?

I loved Honey and bought the cd single.

there is a time and place for everything.
and when my head hurts i listen to moby.
i have no problem with this album, or, when he sings.
that said, when it comes to blues samples being reused in a modern context,
i much prefer the little axe groove, but then i would.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

it's nice, and sometimes I want to listen to nice music.

it's simple, undemanding and unambiguous. you can surf around it and enjoy it with a bit of detachment like you'd enjoy touring a shopping centre. much as I like a lot of music that doesn't require too much attention, it doesn't work when the music is desperately trying to conjure a feeling of poignant beauty. cut&paste pathos. seems of a piece with the thomas newman american beauty soundtrack. I can't imagine anyone topping this though, it is a dazzling turd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSY5HaXxTgI

ps. there's no way this albums indefensible

the thread awaits

Nicolas Jaar

WHISPERING WIND was the first Moby song I ever downloaded and I loved it.

Iirc it was an Audiogalaxy download and it then recommended me to listen to Boards of Canada.

i had this when i was in HS and listened to it and "18" a lot before my junior year and probably sold themm before i went to college or something because i dont think i've listened to them since.

anyway, i went back and the only one i actually sat through for the whole thing was "my weakness".

this was the official album of every no-tablecloth fine dining place in philly when i lived there.

i do like WAIT FOR ME (from 2009) quite a bit. his version of bedroom pop melancholia.

This is also the “vinyl me please” album/reissue of the month and they have two features an interview with Moby tañking about the album and a review of why they think it’s a great album if you want a well thought defense for it:

http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/mobys-liner-notes/

http://www.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/play-reissue-details/

i recently a podcast episode about a guy who said he loaned Moby a copy of the anthology he ended up getting most of the Play samples from. He'd been trying to get the record back for a decade and a half.

― President Keyes, miércoles 13 de diciembre de 2017 15:09 (two weeks ago)

In the Moby interview he says the album is the Lomax comp “Songs of the South” that he borrowed from a friend!

The comp is on spotify and it’s great btw.

“Sounds of the south” not songs

Difficult to now hear this album with fresh ears after years of overexposure and tons of clones. But hardly indefensible. 18 had a great lead single but the well had otherwise run dry

He did oversaturate Play with too many songs and it’s too front loaded, the 2nd half gets boring.

If he had released it as a 12 track album and save another 12 for a Pt. 2 released 10 months later he could’ve had two hit albums in less than a year.

More a fan of Play: The B-Sides bonus CD

1. Flower
2. Sunday
3. Memory Gospel
4. Whispering Wind
5. Summer
6. Spirit
7. Flying Foxes
8. Sunspot
9. Flying Over the Dateline
10. Running
11. The Sun Never Stops Setting

is Gwen Stefani on the album version of "South Side"?

― flappy bird, Wednesday, December 13, 2017 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know mh already answered this, but nope. I made the mistake of buying the album for my then-gf, who liked the Gwen version. I was back at the record shop the next day to buy the CD5, which cost nearly as much as the album!

I believe it's called overselling:

Play is easily the most influential album in the history of electronic music, because it made an entire audience for the music out of nothing.

Might have posted this upthread but it seems to me that this record’s biggest legacy (and perhaps Moby’s) is that it effectively killed the idea that a musician could “sell out” in licensing of all his or her songs.

It’s almost hard to remember now but before this record, there was an almost puritanical view of licensing music within alternative/independent musician circles (of which Moby was still then a member). It mostly came up in the wake of grunge and alternative, which found a bunch of heretofore small independent acts used to playing clubs and selling a few thousand records at best suddenly signed to major labels, selling tons of records and playing in stadiums. Notwithstanding their sudden increase in popularity, using your music to expressly sell products remained largely verboten — and to the extent it was done at all, it was largely seen as an embarrassment.

By 1999, however, grunge and alternative were largely dead. A number of these acts had been dropped by the majors. Some completely flopped — others had successfully (and shamelessly) commercialized themselves to broaden their audience (I’m still blown away at how generic the Butthole Surfers became). But however you felt about it, a whole lot of heroes were dead by the end of the decade, either literally or figuratively — as was any notion of “integrity” in pop music (which was always a terrible idea anyway).

Enter Play. By not simply licensing the music but by making a self-conscious statement that he intended to license every song on the record, Moby effectively gave a host of musicians license to do the same. Almost immediately, and accelerated by the internet and the advent of mp3s, the floodgates opened and countless indie acts were getting their music on TV shows, commercials and the like. Music was everywhere And artists making money off of it (instead of just the labels) was “OK."

Whatever else you think of the music itself (I enjoy it), that to me is the record’s biggest legacy. There really is no such thing as "selling out" anymore. Musicians are free to make money off their “art” in pretty much any way possible. Thanks, Moby.

can we talk about how bad Moby's live setup is

this is pretty great though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsjr49AdrUA

Is he actually hitting a note or percussion with the drumsticks? You can hear them hitting pads in the video but I don’t hear what they’re doing in the music.

It seems like the beat is already there and he’s just playbacking it which looks totally stupid if that’s it.

that's exactly what he's doing

he still does it except he has his band play on top of the full album track which is terrible and stupid

did he explicitly state that he planned to license every song on Play? how did other artists react?

they took drugs

Always a good time to post this account of being in Moby's band and pretending to play keyboards:
http://inthemix.junkee.com/my-1993-rave-adventure-with-moby/19934
http://inthemix.junkee.com/how-i-survived-americas-first-ever-rave-tour/20112

i think tbh that the selling out for Moby wasn't much of an issue bc the usual folks who'd cry "sellout!" at a musician licensing their songs only moan if it's rock music, i don't think blues-sampling electronic tunes are gonna register for them.

Always a good time to post this account of being in Moby's band and pretending to play keyboards:
http://inthemix.junkee.com/my-1993-rave-adventure-with-moby/19934
http://inthemix.junkee.com/how-i-survived-americas-first-ever-rave-tour/20112

― change display name (Jordan)

Great read! Makes me both respect and disrespect Moby.

Also there's a podcast interview where Moby addresses Richard D James calling him a buffoon and an elitist. Moby thinks (or at least lies about it) that he called him a buffoon because he played guitar on stage and that he was being called an elitist for having insomnia and not being talkative. These Jim Poe anecdotes actually reveal the reason... he was just dancing on stage like a buffoon with unplugged instruments and he travelled on airplane while everyone else (including Aphex Twin and Orbital) travelled by bus with the rest of the roadies and staff.

Points to RDJ and fuck you Moby.

It also shows how Moby was a businessman first and a musician second so the shameless selling out of Play shouldn't be surprising to any of his fans.

dude aint got no soul

good read that Jim Poe article

It seems that Jim Poe article has vanished from the intertubes.