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mobility-digest         Sunday, July 18 1999         Volume 02 : Number 043



Re: (mobility) Moby on Hypeless.com
(mobility) the mysterious Move 2x12" + Mobility 12"
Re: (mobility) the mysterious Move 2x12" + Mobility 12"
Re: (mobility) Moby on Hypeless.com
Re: (mobility) Meeting Moby and other stuff
(mobility) Moby in Future Music Magazine, July 1999

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 14:58:13 -0700
From: "kelbert" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (mobility) Moby on Hypeless.com

Anthony Gall wrote:
> hmm, interesting message here...noticed that it contains absolutely NO
> reference to moby...there should be a filter for these sort of things! :P
>

the exact same message showed up on the orbital list.

*cough* spam *cough*

well, at least it was music related... and not just useless crap.  then
again,
i never went the url (because thats what they WANT you to do) so i can't
really comment on what the content of the site was like.

but still... it smells like spam....

- -kelly

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 23:08:44 +0200
From: "Bart van Eijck" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (mobility) the mysterious Move 2x12" + Mobility 12"

A while ago I talked about this Move 2x12" I had ordered.
I got it today! (together with the Mobility 12" !!!)

The Move 2x12" turned out to be the regular US Move 12"
and the US promo 12" put together in the regular Move's
sleeve. Nice, considering the fact I only paid $10 for them.

The Mobility 12" sure is an obscure release!
The record comes in a plain black sleeve and the label
(silver) says MOBY in some 3D version of the European
'Go' single font. There also are track titles, a little Instinct
logo, credits, speed (33RPM) and the cat.#  EX-226.

Bart
np: Miss Jane - It's a fine day (ATB radio mix)

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 17:16:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: wext phain <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (mobility) the mysterious Move 2x12" + Mobility 12"

HI BART(ANE EVERY ONE). ISN'T IT COOL TO PLUNK THAT
MOBLILTY 12" DOWN AND DROP THE NEEDLE. IT'S ONE OF MY
FAVORITES(EVEN IF ALL THE SONGS ARE AVAILABLE
ELSEWHERE). I WANTED TO THANK YOU FOR THE HEADS UP ON
THE MYMN 12" ON EBAY. I WON! SO I WILL SOON BE ABLE TO
HEAR THE UPRIVER MIX. I'M TOTALLY EXCITED!

PEACE-CHRISTIAN



- --- Bart van Eijck <[e-mail]> wrote:
> A while ago I talked about this Move 2x12" I had
> ordered.
> I got it today! (together with the Mobility 12" !!!)
>
> The Move 2x12" turned out to be the regular US Move
> 12"
> and the US promo 12" put together in the regular
> Move's
> sleeve. Nice, considering the fact I only paid $10
> for them.
>
> The Mobility 12" sure is an obscure release!
> The record comes in a plain black sleeve and the
> label
> (silver) says MOBY in some 3D version of the
> European
> 'Go' single font. There also are track titles, a
> little Instinct
> logo, credits, speed (33RPM) and the cat.#  EX-226.
>
> Bart
> np: Miss Jane - It's a fine day (ATB radio mix)
>
>
>
>

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 23:33:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mandi Maycumber <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (mobility) Moby on Hypeless.com

> wait a second....aren't you hyping the site right
> now?? eh well....
>
> -Anthony


LOL... That's EXACTLY what I wuz thinking...

_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 00:59:43 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: (mobility) Meeting Moby and other stuff

AJ, Moby is playing at the 930 club? Do you know which one and when? thanks.
Danny

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 1999 22:22:57 -0400
From: "Eric M. Goldberg" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (mobility) Moby in Future Music Magazine, July 1999

Here's the full article from Future Music's July 1999 issue.  Read on!
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Having already explored the worlds of house, techno, ambient, punk rock
and soundtrack music, Moby is back with an album of breakbeat-soaked
swamp blues.  Martin James went to meet the man known to his mum as
Richard Hall in his Manhattan home

Richard Hall opens the door on his spacious loft conversion.  Its
situated on a the top floor of a ex-psychiatric hospital in the Soho
district of New York.  Trendy boutiques line the sidewalks once littered
with junkies.  Down in the basement is the studio where the Beastie Boys
last recorded their last album and filmed the video for Three MCs and
One DJ.  You say its a building of some history.

Not unlike one of the top floor residents, Mr. Hall, in fact.  The
slight, shaven-headed musician has delivered some of the finest rave
tunes, punk songs, ambient epics and techno workouts of the last ten
years.  And this month sees the release of his eighth album.  It's
called Play, its creator is better known as Moby and were sitting in his
sparsely decorated apartment-cum-studio with the sun beating down
through the huge windows discussing life, the universe, music and the
man's own working methods.

A bit of this, a bit of that As someone not afraid to explore the
elasticity of genre, Mobys recorded output has been nothing if not
eclectic.  Whether intentionally so on his debut album for Mute
Everything is Wrong where he pursued a melting pot of styles with an
almost perverse sense of mischief or as a way of recapturing the energy
of youth as on the belligerent garage punk collection Animal Rights, he
has always eschewed the externally imposed boundaries of style and
genre.  For Moby it's a simple act of anti-fundamentalism.  For much of
the media such shifts of direction have been viewed with suspicion.

Hes therefore become the dance musician dance mags love to hate, the
rock the rock press don't understand and the soundtracker the film world
wont acknowledge.  For the man once called the "Iggy Pop of techno",
fitting into someone elses tight genres is simply not an option.  Even
if it would make life a little easier for the world to compartmentalise
him.

Against the grain For his latest album, New York Citys favourite
maverick has once again defied the style police and come up with an
album of down-temp, swamp blues thats inspired as much by indigenous
field recordings of black American folk music as it is by hip hop.  Not
only his most commercial venture for quite some time, Play is also his
finest album yet.

This mans musical adventures, it would seem, know no bounds.  Its an
approach which points an accusatory finger at the anti-evolution purism
of dance culture and Play provides a one-finger salute to the purists
who have written him off since he first deserted the dancefloor a few
years back.

"Fundamentalism exists in all areas of life.  Ive simply found myself
criticized by music fundamentalists", explains Moby.  "Fundamentalism
whether its religious or with dance music or whatever, is so attractive
to people because it provides you with a rigid, unchanging lens through
which to see the world," he argues.

"Everything is neatly compartmentalized and easily slotted.  If you're a
drum n bass fundamentalist, either it fits in your slot as acceptable or
unacceptable.  Its so clear. It has to be to because the world is
complicated and confusing that people love belief systems that are
reductionist.  This is how they make sense of all of the ambiguity in
the world.

Compare and contrast Moby has made sense of all of the ambiguity in the
world by trying to adapt to all of its complexities.  As a result, the
key words that crop up in Mobys conversation are tolerance and
flexibility.  Words which are borne out in his lifestyle.  He is still a
Christian, although he doesnt believe in any organized religion, and he
still chooses to be a vegan although, as he points out on one of his
infamous inner sleeve essays (this time from Play) "I dont judge people
who choose to eat meat."

These days Moby is indeed a far more tolerant man than the one who first
launched his dance music career through seminal rave tracks life I Feel
It and the Twin Peaks sampling Go.  "I just figure the world is
complicated enough," he laughs.  "And to be honest, Ive been wrong so
many times in the things Ive said.  When I was younger I was a lot more
narrow in my beliefs, in some ways I couldnt accept another view to have
the same validity as mine.  But Ive been proved to be so spectacularly,
idiotically wrong on so many occasions that Ive come to accept that
theres room for many views.  Its all about a balance."

"Its like with the millennium, he continues.  "The worrying thing about
the millennium is that its going to be followed by a world malaise
because of the depression at nothing happening.  Its like in wartime
when people prayed for peace but once it came they found out that,
actually peace is pretty dull.

"Im not advocating war but, for example, when I first moved to New York
I lived with three other guys.  One of them ended up being a
psychopath.  I mean he was really crazy, he tried to kill us and to burn
down the apartment.  We tried so hard to get rid of him and then finally
he left.  We cleaned up the apartment and thought, Wow, life is going to
be great now, but actually it was kind of boring.

"As I said, I'm not advocating war, or living with psychopaths or the
millennium bug or anything.  I'm just saying that somewhere between war
and peace, life is interesting.  And there are a lot of different ways
of living between war and peace.  No one way is fundamentally better
than the other.

Staring me out.  When Moby talks he fixes you with a captivating stare.
Not a threatening,
testosterone-induced stare but one, which both puts you at your ease and
makes you feel like he's completely captivated by your conversation.
It's the kind of skill a politician spends years learning.  With Moby
however, you always get the feeling that he is totally sincere in his
actions.

It's this sincerity that he admires in others.  Especially when it comes
to music with the man who has occasionally been known as the Little
Idiot, Evil Ninja or even DJ Cake, giving huge props to the current Blur
output as sounding "honest, in some way true to themselves."

This honesty is something, which Moby has striven for in his music.  And
where it can be contest that both Everything is Wrong and Animal Rights
were contrived in their execution, with Play Moby seems to have made a
record that has no need to make any statement beyond its own music.  No
deliberate eclecticism in order to shake up the dance fascists of the
electronic music
purists.

"I have been told that this is a wildly eclectic album," he says with a
look of amazement, "but really I think I've tried to make something,
which hangs together as a whole.  For this record I probably made about
200 songs.  Out of these about 40 were punk rock songs, 30 were faster
techno-y house things and I also made about 20 straight forward pop
songs because I have in the
back of my mind this anonymous pop project.

"I knew that I didn't want to make an album from any of these styles
this time.  After the last album, Animal Rights which was very
aggressive I wanted this album to be more inviting.  Still very personal
and emotional but a little bit warmer and less self indulgent."

Play away In many ways Play can be split into three separate, yet
intrinsically linked, sections.  Firstly there are the tracks like the
singles Honey and Run On which were formed around field recordings made
by a folk historian called Alan Lennox who, along with his father,
amassed a huge catalogue of black music in the early 20th century.  Next
up are the tracks featuring Moby himself on vocal duties like Porcelain
and South Side.  Finally come the quiet instrumental tracks like
Rushing.  The whole thing is then held together by the down temp,
commercial hip hop breaks as inspired by Busta Rhymes and Puff Daddy.

Despite the apparent change in direction, the whole thing still sounds
typically Moby.  Why?  "I have a sort of like stereotypical string sound
from the (Yamaha) SY22 which you hear on almost everything.  I use the
same two patches for everything," he says as we walk into his studio
which he declares has been "tidied up for the benefit of this
interview."

"Every record I've ever made, I've done everything myself," he continues
while stepping over Roxy Music CDs and Joe Jackson album, "mainly
because whenever I work with other people in other studios I get kind of
nervous.

"This is because I've been working by myself since 1983 when I had a
little Mattel drum machine and Task M four-track which set up my basic
methodology of working.  And when I go into outside studio I have that
added pressure of having to do something good because I've just spent
$2,000 a day on it.  At home I can spend a week and get garbage and not
feel bad about it."

Moby's studio is swamped by two things: fly posters advertising all of
his albums and his Soundcraft desk.  Along one wall sits a rack of
keyboards while his samplers and effects stand in a single tower.  Next
to the desk sit two Apple Macs.  However it's the older model he reaches
to in order to demonstrate the tools of his trade.

"Isn't it pathetic I have this brand new Macintosh G3 and I'm still
using my old 2CI," he laughs. "My friends think I'm a retard.  I bought
the brand new version of Cubase VST for the G3 but I don't like the way
it quantisizes.  This old version from about 1993 on my 2CI has, like,
these four different built-in shuffle parameters and it just feels
livelier.

"In 1987 when I was messing around with my (Roland) TR-606 and my Casio
CZ-101, all I wanted was more equipment," he continues as the Apple Mac
loads the software.  "I would read magazines and look in stores and
drool over things.  I'd be, like, If I only could afford a MidiVerb
everything be fine'.  I used to know my equipment inside out.  But now
that I've got loads of gear, I'm not so into pulling stuff apart.  I'll
even stick with the factory preset on the synths."

With (Digidesign) Pro Tools up and running, Moby points to his four
separate samplers, all of which he used in tandem in order to create as
much sampling time as possible to record this album.  On Everything Is
Wrong, each track required a completely different set using separate
sample disks and so on.  The process of loading each track took at least
25 minutes.  For Play Moby created a huge palette of sounds to choose
from so he could just load and start playing as the mood took him.

"I have this Akai museum here," he says.  "I bought the S950 in 1990.
In 1993 I bought the S1000 and then two years ago I bought the S3200.
For this album I decided I wanted to create as much sample space as
possible so I bought S3000.  So I've got pretty much every Akai sampler
they made between 1989 and 1998.  Now they have all these big huge crazy
ones with the removable faceplate but I don't have any of those.

"To me the 1000, 3000, and the 3200 are pretty much the same machine.
Thereæs a world of difference between them and the S950 but those three
are pretty much the same.  The differences are subtle.  I mean the 3200
is a waste of time for me.  It does all of these things that I'll never
do like read and write SMPTE.  I use my Studio 4 for doing that.  The
S950 is a wonderful machine.  It's really special for looping and
rimming samples.  For some reason it's just more intuitive."

Learning leap For Moby sampling has a lot to do with intuition.  Not for
him the laborious task of learning to use the equipment inside out,
upside down and in another dimension.  "I've read an interview with DJ
Shadow where he's said that he wants to master every single thing about
the sampler and be like the sample king," he grins.  "I'm not at all
like him.  My approach is pretty rudimentary.  I sample things and then
I use that sample.

"The only thing I do tend to do is play with the filters.  The S3200 has
two filter banks which I really like.  You can send things like LFO to
the filters.  On the track My Weakness from the latest album, I have
this African choral vocal which has just been filtered to death.  Now it
has no bearing on the original.  And there's a song called Down Slow,
and it's got this drum loop which has been really manipulated through
the filter banks.  But that's about as far as I go into the trickery."

Running the whole show is the trusty Cubase.  Moby may not like the Mac
version but it's a system he can't see himself changing in the near
future.  "When I bought my first Mac, the guy that sold it to me
recommended Cubase so I went with that.  Basically I've never used
anything else since," he considers, as he absent-mindedly plays the Twin
Peaks keyboard refrain from Go on his SY22, as if to make his earlier
point about the stereotypical Moby string sound.

"Until 1991, I used an Alesis MMT8, a potato chip sequencer that I
loved.  It's a wonderful piece of equipment but so limited.  I loved the
way it was part based rather than being linear like Cubase.  It's really
easy to make monotonous music on modern sequencers like Cubase as
opposed to thinking about linear blocks and segments which helped avoid
making monotonous
 music."

"Sometimes, for me, it's the limitations of a piece of equipment that
make a composition so special.  The piano will always sound just like a
piano but that limitation makes a piano wonderful.  The only piece of
equipment that comes close to being limitless is the sampler.  The only
real limitations are what we as humans bring to it."

Magical Mystery Man
A sentiment echoed time and time again on these very pages.  However
rarely do artists live up to their grandiose claims with record after
record keeping to similar structures and frameworks.  The magic of
Moby's music is that it manages to tap into the energies of the source
and marry them to the limitless imaginations of the true sonic surfer.
His music may be commercial, but in his career he has explored more
musical terrain than a thousand worthy underground artists.

"These days there's so much to know about engineering in a studio," he
concludes as we walk back into the white washed calm of his living
room.  "One of the album tracks, South Side, was mixed on an SSL.  I'd
always found them quite daunting but I succeeded and just thought to
myself, "Wow, Iæm like a real engineer now'.  It'll be interesting in 20
or 30 years to autopsy the brains of sound engineers from the late 20th
century."

Doubtless, it would be just as interesting to autopsy the brain of one
Richard æMoby' Hall as well.  But let's hope it never comes to that.

[Future Music Magazine, July 1999]

(This was also included)
Kit List:
Akai S950, Akai S1000, Akai S3000, Akai 3200, Alesis ADAT, Apple Mac
running Cubase, Casio CZ-101, dbx 160XT compressor, E-mu Pro Piano,
Eventide DSP4000, Hafler power amp, Oberheim Matrix 1000, Roland
Juno106, Roland Jupiter 6, Roland TB-303, Roland TR-606, Roland TR-909,
Sans Amp footswitch, Serge modular synth, Soundlab vocoder, Spirit by
Soundcraft 24:8:2 desk, Technics 1200 turntables, Waldorf Pulse Plus,
Yamaha SPX900, Yamaha SY22, Yamaha SY35, Yamaha SY85 plus guitars and
basses.

Sidebar: "Moby's Graveyard"
"I have a gear graveyard which I haven't looked at in a long time
because itæs so depressing.  The Roland GP-100 guitar preamp processor
entered the graveyard really quickly because its got unusable sounds.
It was cool in the show room but when I got it home it sounded too
Japanese.  Not that Iæm anti Japanese.  "Another mistake was this
Drawmer EQ.  I got the idea that I needed a valve EQ so I bought this.
It's really expensive, and it's good but I never use it.  I also have a
Yamaha TX16W.  It's the least user-friendly operating system I've ever
encountered in my life, it's just awful.  I use it for strings very
occasionally because it's got nice a nice organic string sound, like a
solo violin.  That was the first sampler I ever bought and I saved up my
money for months to buy this thing.  And it took me like forever just to
do anything.  I spent so many nights just going to be panicking because
I'd just spent all this money on a sampler and I couldn't even get it to
work".

Sidebar:  "Working Solo"
"When you're working by yourself you can lose objectivity so quickly and
molehills become mountains.  I'll be working on a song and if I can't
get the kick drum to sound right I'll think I'm a failure and walk
around Manhattan, mourning my fate.  It doesn't matter that I've made
lots of records in the past.  All that matters is I can't get one kick
drum right.  And all I can thinks is my careers over and I'm going to
have to become a fries chef at Macdonalds.

"I wasn't happy with the mixes other people did for me so I went back to
my own mixes that I did at home.  Then I asked Liam from The Prodigy to
mix something because I loved the sound he got on The Fat Of The Land.
It's just a remarkable sounding record.  One of those nights last year
when I was walking around Manhattan feelings like a failure, I'd done a
mix here and I put in on headphones.  Then I thought, just for fun I'd
put on the The Fat Of The Land.  It sounded a million times better so I
got very depressed.  So I asked Liam if he'd be interested in mixing
some or all of the album but he was too busy.  It was a fortunate thing
in the end because I'm really happy with the way that the album turned
out.

"In the end I simply couldn't collaborate with someone else.  The only
time I've tried it was in 1991 with Westbam.  We were hanging out
together and decided it would be fun  to try and make a track.  In the
end we just brought the worst out in each other.  I've been making music
for 25 years now so I don't think about the process that much.  It's got
to the point where it's neither an intellectual nor a visceral process.
It's just something immediate and almost automatic.  And working with
another person simply affects that feeling."

Pictures:
- - Moby inside a grocery store, sitting on the ground, resting himself
against a beverage cooler.
- - Moby in a plain white T-shirt, with his hands folded covering his
face.  Almost as if he were going to take a nap during class, but
instead takes a peak at you.  The quotation around it is "Moby thinking
hard about what style he's going to adopt for the next album."
- - Moby playing a guitar and somewhat headbanging along.
- - Another shot of Moby resting himself on those refrigerator doors in
the grocery store.  The quotation around it is "No one ever goes thirsty
in Mobyæs well-equipped studio."  I think it was just a little joke,
because Moby's studio isn't in a supermarket!

- ------------------------------------------------------------
There's also a discography and a weird note when a paragraph on the
magazine was to be continued on the next page they used a little
triangle very similar to the Play button on the cover of "Play".  Though
it was just a coincidence because they used it on other interview
articles.

One last thing, the CD that comes bound with the magazine (Future Music)
has the album version of "Natural Blues".  The length is only different
by one second.  I'd comment on the rest of the disc but I haven't
listened to it all yet, but I definitely recommend this magazine to
Electronic Musicians.  It is a bit expensive since its from the UK
(lucky UK people!) but its got tons of info, plus the CD has music
tracks usually from bands like Moby (electronic that is) and even
unsigned artists that compete in contests, and demos and tools for
making music.  I may subscribe to it even though it will cost an arm and
a leg.  I hope you enjoyed this article, I enjoyed reading as I typed
it, I just hope somebody hasn't already done the same or Future Music
doesn't have it online.  If you'd like to humor me, visit my website
(located below), I have a couple of remixes I did for the Thanks 1 and
(upcoming) 2 compilations.  Plus my own music, where you can download
mp3s at the mp3.com site.  Thanks!

Over and out.
Eric
http://www.tonematrix.com
http://www.mp3.com/tonematrix


> *** This message was caught in a filter & therefor delayed
> *** It has been forwarded and edited for appearance not content.
> *** Questions?  mailto:[e-mail]

------------------------------

End of mobility-digest V2 #43
*****************************

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