moby

‘The Broken Places’ starts off with a vocoder loop. See, when I’m making an album, I’ll tend to write about 300 songs and narrow it down to the 15 songs that are on the album, which isn’t to say that the songs that don’t make it onto the record aren’t any good. It’s not like 300 amazing songs and I have to get rid of 285 amazing songs. Some of them aren’t very good. 

This song ‘The Broken Places’ was a weird instrumental that I’d written that I liked and thus assumed no one else would like it. And I played it to a few friends and they were like “Ah actually that’s interesting”. The more I lived with it the more I liked it. And what I love, it’s quiet repetitive and almost every element in there is broken, which I guess in keeping with the title but it’s an old Korg vocoder that barely works. I forget what drum machine I used but one of those, I think it might have been a home made, there is this company from Ohio called Paia and I got a home made kit drum machine that someone built in the 70’s. Again, it just barely, barely works. 

So I felt like this was a broken down, sort of winsome, endearing, electronic piece of music. I needed to come with a title for it. That’s the tricky thing with instrumentals is what you call them. And this one, there is a Ernest Hemingway quote, which I think I’m paraphrasing but basically says, life breaks most of us and some of us are stronger at the broken places, and I’ve always loved that quote, which I’m paraphrasing. And so I liked that as an introductory album title for the album because it does sort of emotionally set the tone for the rest of the record. 

The one regret I have about that first song is the original version is about 8 minutes long and just keeps repeating for 8 minutes. And I was kind of a sissy and I thought that having an 8 minutes repetitive introductory song in an album was just a little too much to expect anyone to get through. So I was a sissy and I edited it down to 3.5 minutes. If anyone wants the full 8 minutes version I am happy to send it to them. 


The Broken Places

The song ‘Be The One’ also started with a vocoder loop. And it was the same broken down Korg vocoder. One of my favourite ways of making songs is to start with a decontextualised loop and then just keep adding stuff to it. So with this one there is the vocoder loop and I added a crummy, old, organ pad to it and a drum machine and then two live drum tracks, two bass tracks, tons of synthesizers to make this weird Phil Spector minus the wig and the prison sentence, this wall of sound. 

The idea was this, once everything kicks in my hope is that no one really knows what they’re listening to. Like you can’t tell if it is a bass, or a guitar, or a synthesizer, it’s just this gestalt, crazy wall of sound. And the very last thing I added to it, my friend Joe, who I was working with, said, “Oh wouldn’t it sound cool with a bunch of feedback?”. So I took a hollow body electric guitar and plugged it in three old punk rock distortion pedals I have and turned each one as loud as it could go and put an old ribbon mic in front of the amp and recorded the nosiest destructive feedback I could get. So it’s there through the whole track mixed really, really quietly. So it’s kind of inspired by spending too much time in little bars listening to Glenn Branca, Thurston Moore. The noisy sort of sonic youth Glenn Branca inspired wall of feedback underneath the track. 

I don’t really like happy lyrics that much. So the lyrics were never written down. It’s just me sort of singing into a vocoder. So it’s completely spontaneous, just about what I generally write about, which is relationships falling apart. Maybe at some point I will write songs about relationships working out but unless you are John Fogerty it seems like no one’s really good at that. 


Be The One

Lie Down In Darkness (Photek Remix)

Wait For Me (Christoffer Berg Flash Treatment remix)

On May 17th, Moby will release 'Wait For Me. Remixes!', an album consisting of reworked versions of tracks from the critically acclaimed 'Wait For Me', released through Moby’s label 'Little Idiot' last year. Moby has enlisted some of dance music's biggest names for the project including Tiesto, Laidback Luke, Gui Boratto, and Carl Cox.

Wait For Me (Paul Kalkbrenner remix)

Pale Horses (Gui Boratto's Last Window remix)

Walk With Me (Carl Cox Remix)

Blue Moon (Holy Ghost! Remix)

Remix and additional production by Lulu Rouge and Stella Polaris Allstars

Natural Blues (Lulu Rouge vs. Stella Polaris Remix)

Moby - The Right Thing (Kleerup Remix)

Remix of 'Lie Down In Darkness' from Moby's album 'Destroyed'. Also featured on Café del Mar Vol. 18 (XVIII).

Lie Down In Darkness (Ben Hoo's Dorian Vibe)

As well as being given an orchestral make-over, "Extreme Ways (Bourne’s Legacy)" is now set to dominate the world-wide club scene once again thanks to a massive rework from the legend himself Moby under his "Voodoo Child" guise and reworks from German DJ/Producers Tocadisco and Moguai, UK EDM act Loverush UK! for the Progressive House masses, and Loops Of Fury for the electro-house masses. For the dubstep floors there’s PatrickReza and for those favouring a more underground, old skool twist we have Matador completing this awesome well-worthy 2012 re-release of the "Extreme Ways" classic. 

Extreme Ways (Bourne's Legacy) PatrickReza Remix

In celebration of 2013’s Record Store Day, moby and @MarkLanegan have collaborated on an exclusive track to be released as a limited edition 7” on 20th April. The Lonely Night 7” comes backed with a remix from electronic music legend https://soundcloud.com/photek and is being released on moby’s own label Little Idiot. 

moby on collaborating with Mark Lanegan: 

"i've been a fan of mark's from his early sst records days, and i've always wanted to work with him. he has one of the best and most distinctive voices of the last 25 years. now that we live near each other it ended up being really easy working on a song together."

moby on producing of The Lonely Night: 

“…And in producing the song, spike stent and i incorporated some very unusual production techniques... we ran all of the instruments through a distortion pedal into a guitar amp. so really there are only 3 tracks: left channel through a distortion pedal and guitar amp, right channel through a distortion pedal and guitar amp, and mark's vocals.  The end result is intentionally very broken and atmospheric."

Colin Rich a LA based director who specializes in time-lapse photography has been commissioned to shoot the video to accompany The Lonely Night.  The video features both moby and Mark Lanegan and flits between the desolate and far removed terrain of the Californian desert and the endless electric city expanse of Los Angeles.  

Moby & Mark Lanegan - The Lonely Night

In celebration of 2013’s Record Store Day, moby and @MarkLanegan have collaborated on an exclusive track to be released as a limited edition 7” on 20th April. The Lonely Night 7” comes backed with a remix from electronic music legend @photek and is being released on moby’s own label Little Idiot. The track is also now available as a digital download and stream.

moby on collaborating with Mark Lanegan: 

"i've been a fan of mark's from his early sst records days, and i've always wanted to work with him. he has one of the best and most distinctive voices of the last 25 years. now that we live near each other it ended up being really easy working on a song together."

moby on producing of The Lonely Night: 

“…And in producing the song, spike stent and i incorporated some very unusual production techniques... we ran all of the instruments through a distortion pedal into a guitar amp. so really there are only 3 tracks: left channel through a distortion pedal and guitar amp, right channel through a distortion pedal and guitar amp, and mark's vocals.  The end result is intentionally very broken and atmospheric."

Colin Rich a LA based director who specializes in time-lapse photography has been commissioned to shoot the video to accompany The Lonely Night.  The video features both moby and Mark Lanegan and flits between the desolate and far removed terrain of the Californian desert and the endless electric city expanse of Los Angeles. Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SO0qSfxqyk

moby

Dino Boffa