Ambient – Mobile – Released August 17th, 1992 – Instinct Records 1993
Alright, let’s talk about Moby then.
He’s quite a slippery aquatic mammal, Moby, especially where genres are concerned.
But I guess that’s why I admire the guy. He’s not the type to pick a musical lane and just stick to it and has an almost Bowie-like craving for constant reinvention, even if he often does our heads in while doing so.
Moby’s always been as much an innovator as he’s been an aggravator, not to mention a highly accomplished composer, songwriter and talented multi-instrumentalist.
Put it all together and the result is pure artistry – even though a considerable amount of his back catalogue is pure shite.
I loved his early stuff, especially when he got deep and tribal. I utterly loathed his happy hardcore phrase, but kinda liked the metal album – though I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Then came Play, perhaps the most played-out album of all time. I honestly hope I never hear another song from that album as long as I live, but I know that’s impossible.
Yet again, on this point, I seem to be in the minority as it’s not only his most popular album, it’s also the one that put him on most people’s radar. (It’s kind of ironic really when you think that The Prodigy broke America five years before he, a US native, did.)
That’s why I always say Moby has serious Marmite factor because so much of his output is so musically polarising. His third album, 1995’s Everything Is Wrong is a case in point, it’s an album predominantly consisting of happy hardcore cheese but with some ambient and punk thrown in.
And how many happy hardcore-loving ambient punks do you know?
Whether or not Moby’s musical meanderings were conscious decisions, or if he just exists in a permanent identity crisis is worthy of debate.
Either way, his no-fucks-given approach to production saw him release a 1,000 bpm track for a lark one day (it’s called Thousand and I fucking love it!) and one of the greatest chillout albums of all time the next.
Although I was somewhat late in discovering it (I was too busy raving out to the Move EP at the time) I now place it up there alongside releases from Mixmaster Morris, Aphex Twin and The Orb as one of the best downtempo albums of the decade.
Nobody Listens To Techno Or ….Ambient
Ambient enjoys the distinction of being the most cohesive and, dare I say, coherent album in Moby’s entire back catalogue. Listening back to it now, I think it might also be my favourite.
I guess the first thing to point out is that it’s not actually ambient, but more of a post-club chill album. And, while it was no doubt released to capitalise on that whole early 90s “ambient house” wave, it sees Moby playing to his strengths – namely a penchant for symphonic compositions and infectious club grooves.
There’s nothing particularly challenging here, but that’s part of the charm. The beauty is in its simplicity. It works well as background listening, but careful listening can be equally rewarding as each revisit unveils new layers to discover.
It opens with a track called My Beautiful Blue Sky, a soft, floaty piece consisting of layers of synth strings with some tribal flourishes adding percussive cadence.
Heaven is a gentle groove that rides atop of muted 4/4 kick for several minutes with not much else going on but honestly, have a listen and you’ll see it doesn’t really need much else.
Tongues is another prime example of ambient house. It has more dense percussion this time, with some clever 909 programming, plus gentle arpeggios and (I’m guessing preset) choral pads that are decidedly 90s.
J Breas is the perfect opportunity for me to talk about another core component of Moby’s sound – pianos. He uses them a lot in his production, especially in his 90s work, for good and for ill.
And while I’ve never been a huge fan of his cheesy hands in the air pianos I’ve regularly swooned at his more classically-influenced works.
Myopia is my favourite track on this album and easily one of the best things he’s ever done. There’s not really much going on in the track, other than a muted kick, an arpeggiated loop and random atmospheric elements but the overall result is pure hypnotic bliss.
House Of Blue Leaves takes its queues from early New York house music but in a very hushed way.
There’s some synth flutes and some Ray Manzarek-style Rhodes riffs (and a little bit of xylophone why not?), it’s cheesy, sure, but there’s a gentle naivety about this track which I enjoy.
Bad Days is a short ambient piece with brooding choral pad layers swelling and pulsing atop a reversed drum loop while Piano & String delivers exactly what it promises, again showcasing Moby’s melancholic compositional side.
Track 9, Sound, is barely a minute long and works to cleanse the palate before we get back to another house groove with Dog.
I like this track in particular because it features a favourite sound of mine, they’re Roland bells which, in true Roland preset style, sound nothing like actual bells.
These “bells”, which form the main groove and which Moby jams over throughout, may or may not have come from Moby’s Roland Jupiter 6.
According to lore, Moby’s Jupiter 6 previously belonged to another fellow NY legend, Joey Beltram… hmm, there’s a name with a nice ring to it…
80 is another short piece of introspective ambient, while the final track, Lean On Me, is a sparse and haunting incantation, ending the album with an eerie, yet poignant whisper.
A 90s Classic
I’m wary of calling this album timeless, since it’s so very much of its time and sounds it – the synth presets, the beats, the textures, they’re all just about as 90s as you can possibly get.
That’s all part of the charm though.
As is the album’s rawness. You can hear Moby playing the keyboards live, often all one take, and you can also hear the seams spliced together too, if you listen closely enough. But again, this only adds to the album’s charm.
A lot of what I hear these days sounds overproduced, overly polished and overly reliant on software. That’s why I’m constantly comparing what I hear with the DIY hardware jams of yore, which were notable for their flaws, but also for their soul. The very fact that “dawless” even exists as a phrase at all tells me I’m not the only one who feels this way.
There’s a degree of simplicity and innocence about this album you don’t find anymore and part of that is down to the limitations of equipment available.
In fact, a lot of my favourite albums from this period fall into this category; young artists with very limited equipment creating incredibly emotive music that continues to inspire to this day.
Think Aphex Twin creating Ambient Works 1 in his bedroom studio, think Liam Howlett practically tapping out all of Experience note by note on his Roland W30.
That back-to-basics approach seems to be inspiring a lot of young up-and-coming producers too – which delights me no end – and to them I say, add this album to your list for inspiration.
Not that they’re the only ones who can draw inspiration from this, I’m confident you will too.
Maybe you don’t like Moby, and I get that. I mean his name is kind of appropriate really ‘cuz, let’s face it, the guy can often come across as a bit of a pretentious dick.
Or maybe you just don’t like his music and can’t understand what all the fuss is about and, given his somewhat disjointed discography, I can totally understand that too.
But this album predates Play-era Moby by half a decade, well before he ever landed in the spotlight.
It’s Moby at his most modest and meditative, occasionally melancholic, often playful but always inspiring. So if you only listen to one Moby album in your entire life, then please make it this one.
Even if you hate Moby, hell, even if you’re Eminem, give it a listen anyway, it’ll help chill you out.