Moby reveals his heart through electrons & groove

Richard Melville Hall may not be a name that rings a bell to the overtly casual music listener, or even some of his ardent & loyal fans, but his 'stage' & artist name should be much more familiar to musicElectrons readers. (I'll let the more literary among you decipher the connection between his artist & birth name.) I first really heard and took notice of Moby during my first viewing of the 1995 Michael Mann LA crime/action thriller Heat. The film possesses a very eclectic, dark & powerful soundtrack & score, including two Moby cuts - New Dawn Fades (a tight, edgy, guitar epic production from Moby's pantheon, reincarnated Joy Division from the 70s) and the ocean lush, melancholy, looping piano/strings-driven God Moving Over the Face of the Waters. A shorter edit of the latter would also be included on 2 original Moby albums, including I Like To Score from 1997.

Moby the person and musician may be many things to those of us who are grateful for him (and even those who may turn their noses & ears). His musical palette includes original compositions & productions that form a bridge across genres of electronica, dance, techno, down-tempo, trip-hop, ambient, DJ-remix, alternative rock and yet somehow more. And he's forged his own independent artist's path through & mostly around the music industry.

His most commercially successfully album (over 10 million sold, double-platinum in US), which also critically broadened his reach, is his fifth, 1999's Play (more info), a true classic IMHO. Several of its cuts permeated US & international media culture for a few years into the new millennium. Play was composed, assembled (from many gospel & folk samples) & produced entirely in Moby's Manhattan apartment, nearly by his lonesome, a wonderfully romantic ideal. No electronica-related collection should exist without Play. His most recent ambitious effort, Innocents, was released just this last October. A sort of production-opposite from Play, it was 'made in LA,' his new home, and includes more collaborators than ever before. 4 months ago I had the great fortune of catching 1 of the only 3 live shows Moby is (was) doing to showcase Innocents and his broad catalog. Maybe a future post will detail that magnificent road-trip odyssey.

Onto matters of the heart, Moby's heart that is. Those of you fairly familiar with his output may already realize what I want to get at here. Ever since that first listen to God Moving Over... during the final celluloid of Heat, on through his wonderful catalog including the very ambient & achingly beautiful s-l-o-w The End Of Everything (as Voodoo Child), to Play, 18 and beyond through more to Innocents, I have consistently felt the musician's open heart poking right through. Moby's use of strings, keyboard, loops and related electronics seems to reveal what he feels deep within - and it must be a heart of compassion, concern, empathy, loss, love and hope. His musical phrasings and layering are his vehicle for this expression, and one of his most notable trademarks. Sometimes passages can bring me to tears, sometimes remind me of or comfort me during lonelier or alone times, other moments tell how even in the grayest of times light and the fresh dawn await. At his peak during these parts of the arrangements, the most beautifully moving melodies can be heard and felt. It's in these moments that the purity of a musician is available to any ear, any soul, for healing and respite from the usual noise around us. Whether you're familiar with Moby or not, I invite you to pull closer and appreciate the feeling in this music that I do. Perhaps it can expand our notions of what electronica & technology can realize in the best of warm hands. A carefully curated sample of Moby tunes & videos across 2 decades is below, possibly a playlist to accompany a winter's night alone or summer's dusk shared by two.

I don't need to have the last word here. As one fan & music reviewer, analog1, so perfectly put it, "...MOBY is always best when no one is listening and he lets his heart make the music." (Well, at least no one but you & me!)

Thanks for listening and don't forget to turn the lights out before you press play...

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net

Open your ears:

Moby albums en iTunes masse

Rushing from Play
Blue Paper from Hotel
Landing from 18 B Sides
Whispering Wind from Play B Sides
Inside from Play
Jltf from Wait For Me
Lie Down in Darkness from Destroyed
Natural Blues from Play
Division from Wait For Me
One Of These Mornings from 18
The Last Day from Innocents
Porcelain from Play
Downhill from 18 B Sides
Rockets from Destroyed
Gentle Love from The End of Everything
Pale Horses from Wait for Me
In My Heart from 18


Open your eyes & ears:

Porcelain (1999)




Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad (1999)




In This World (2002)




Be The One (2011)





The Lonely Night (2013)




Almost Home (2014)

(Tape) Music for a Darkened Theatre

On the eve of Sunday the 5th of January 2014 I was amongst about 80 other brave but wide-eared souls to hear the third night of 'performances' of the annual San Francisco Tape Music Festival. The 2 hour event was held at the Z Below Theater, the small intimate basement space of the larger 13,000 sq/ft Z Space venue, a 20-yr old institute in the Mission District which is "a hub for artists and audiences to revel in the creation, development, and production of outstanding new work."

I have been an appreciative student & fan of the experimental & avant-garde of music since the very early 80s. One branch of this wide under-the-radar milieu is music specifically composed on 'tape' that results in a piece on some sort of fixed medium (media). The composer essentially constructs the piece by bringing together sounds 'found' in the natural world and/or sounds specifically created on tape/computer using technology of the day. About 70 years ago this process involved using all sorts of reel-to-reel & other formats of analog tape & recorders, and later alongside the earliest analog synthesizers such as Buchla and Moog. (The Buchla line of purely electronic instruments was actually designed by a SF Bay Area pioneer in the early 60s, as part of a commission by the SF Tape Music Festival itself!) The earliest nearly mid-20th century compositions spawned a style of electronic music called 'Musique Concrète' and it in turn has brought forth a host of approaches and productions in the last half-century and then some. These days the composition platform du jour is typically the computer and other specialized platforms, where sound elements of any origin can be manipulated beyond belief down to the electron.

Music of this nature is usually presented as playback for the audience from the original master tape, or in the case of this event and most performances today, from a laptop or similar. This evening was a treat because we basically listened to six 8 to 26 minute pieces through 24 speakers in surround in a darkened theater, which left the ears & mind alone to submerse in the odd & creative delights. My neighbor (and yours) would hardly refer to this as music, but my & fellow spectators' very open (some might say tolerant) ears understand this to be music all the same. It's about the furthest from Top 40 radio, jazz & western classical as one can get! It challenges our very notion of what composition, structure and form are about. And the sonic wonders presented are sometimes fantastical, at the least remind us of what we have yet to learn.

One of my two favorites of the evening, as I reflect back, was the 11-minute Bastet (2004) by Elsa Justel from Argentina. To quote a portion of the composer's description, "...Bastet, this naughty cat deity, has slipped into the piano box. Confused by the strange appearance of this place, she tries to find the exit while holding on to the strings." This was a delightfully playful & chaotic & at times humorous piece that combined acoustic instrument strings & parts of drums in all manner of attack, friction & processing. It is not clear if the cat was ever let out of the bag or not! Listen to the 2-minute excerpt found at the link above.

Another notable experience of the night was the 22-minute Hot Air (1995) by Jonty Harrison of the UK. This closing selection, one of the longest of the set, was hypnotic, fat, tiring and elating. One could feel the collective sigh/awe of the audience when it ended, like air finally being let out of tires after a circus inside. In Mr. Harrison's words, "...One of the principal source sounds for this work — balloons from children’s parties — gave rise to a train of thought which, after linking ‘toy’ balloons to ‘hot air’ balloons, went on to draw in numerous other concepts of air (breath, utterance, natural phenomena) and heat (energy, action, danger)." Excusez-moi?

So all that just begins an attempt to describe the SF Tape Music Festival. It was a treat to attend, and sits in wonderfully stark contrast to some of the more traditional, predictable live music shows I often enjoy. Perhaps next time around I will hit all the performances.

Thanks for listening and don't forget to turn the lights out before you press play...

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net

Starting Line

Finally, a unique blog dedicated to electronica & electronic music - we call it musicElectrons!

...or...

Why is this here at all?!




After a few years since landing this lovely locale, I am finally ready to blast this thing off with some actual content. 

My idea is 2-fold & simple - create a place where I can share my unique but not unusual passions & explorations for mostly under-the-radar, falls-between-the-cracks music styles, genres, artists & their sounds; explore my own need & knack for writing, ideally about things I know, think I know and love.

My gut tells me that posts will be weekly or more, and mostly pertain to the various & sundry electronica & electronic music out in the world. This is an immense category of sonic wonder, a path I've been on since 1981 and my earliest college days at UCSD in La Jolla, California. Dropping some household names (to those in the know-ish), think non-western avant-garde stuff from John Cage (see also Wikipedia), Steve Reich, Milton Babbitt & friends, to contemporary groove-oriented trippy-hoppy electrons from Thievery Corp, Massive Attack, Moby, Sounds From The Ground (SFTG) and Trentemøller, to more pure electronica, ambient & down-tempo / chill from Telefon Tel Aviv, Autechre, Michael Stearns, Brian Eno and Ultre, among many others. I suppose in all honesty much of my musing will come from the latter 2 camps, though my 30+ year appreciation crosses many borders in this blurry landscape, as it should be (yes?). If this meets your reasons for staring at a screen while making better use of its static electrons, please stop back occasionally or more. Comments and conversation will be allowed, encouraged, sometimes responded to and all that. And I do intend to offer actual music listening samples, as permitted, etc.

So do hold your breath, but not for too long! This is an organic work-in-progress. My hope is to enlighten, possibly entertain, and maybe upon reading & listening you'll want to grab some new sounds for your own collection, tired, new or old or not.

See you again soon...thanks for jumping off your train for a bit.

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net