Moby blasts into higher orbit

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Moby remembers a record company dinner on his first visit to New Zealand. He was promoting his album Play and the talk around the table he recalls was: "Wouldn't it be great if we could sell maybe 5000 or 10,000 copies of Play in New Zealand?".

"Even that seemed too ambitious at the time," he chuckles down the line from his Manhattan apartment after a long day talking up Play's follow-up album 18.

Overall, he thought Play might sell between 150,000 to 200,000 copies worldwide. He knew it was a far more welcoming affair than his previous confrontational 90s albums which veered in style from techno and house back to punk. But he was still a "weird marginal underground musician".

Play sold 120,000 copies since its release in mid-1999 - in New Zealand alone. It was the biggest-selling album here of 2000 and on a per capita basis we're about level pegging with Ireland as Moby's greatest sales graph.

He didn't do badly in the rest of the world either. Play's sales have topped the 6.5 million mark and made the slight, bald figure with an apparent range of colourful personal philosophies an unlikely pop star.

"Yeah, it's strange, if you compare me to someone like Britney Spears, we both sell a similar number of records and she's young and pretty and sings well and dances well.

"I'm 36 years old, I don't sing particularly well, I don't dance particularly well and someone would be very hard pressed to describe me as particularly attractive and I guess the success of Play is strange because it was successful because people really seemed to like the music which kind of flies in the face of most modern ideas of marketing records."

Moby says there were three elements to Play's success - that it was "an interesting, melodic, emotional record; he stayed on tour for more than two years and did every gig and interview offered; and that his record label Mute had no other big releases at the time.

But there was of course a fourth - Play's mix of gospel and folk blues-samples over lush dance grooves appeared in a lot of soundtracks and advertisements. Every track off Play was licensed for use.

It soon became the background music you couldn't escape. Wasn't he at all worried at how ubiquitous his songs had become?

"It's funny because for me they weren't particularly ubiquitous because for the two years I was touring with Play I was so busy working to get to any movies or watch any TV. So I know the music has appeared on lots of TV commercials and TV shows and what have you, but I never actually felt that."

Although possibly his bank account did.

And undoubtedly we're bound to hear much of 18 behind many a stylishly-shot car commercial. Perhaps the surprising thing about the new album is that it sounds like Play 2.0, considering Moby's constant left turns in his pre-popstar days.

He says he just doesn't want to be a confrontational artist any more.

"I would much rather make a record someone could fall in love with and take it to their home as opposed to making a record that someone can be assaulted by. I find it remarkable that people are willing to take my music into their homes."

It sounds like the former punk rocker has had a change of heart about what his music is for.

"Kind of. I liked the idea of making music that had an emotional utility and I loved the idea of making very personal, intimate music but on the other hand I like the Erik Satie ethos of making music that can create a really nice background atmosphere. With the records I make now I really want to make records you can play at a dinner party or a record you can also play on headphones."

Rather than sampling vintage folk-blues, 18 relies on early-70s soul. "I found myself listening to a lot of orchestral soul from the 70s especially and just loving the emotional quality of it and also the subtle qualities of it.

"I love big bombastic in-your-face pieces of music but at the same time I really love music that is a little more feminine, more sinewy, more subtle and I tried to infuse this record with qualities like that."

While singer Angie Stone and Sinead O'Connor each guest, non-singer Moby warbles four songs himself. On one, the lead single We Are All Made of Stars, he sounds a bit like David Bowie ("My favourite musician of the 20th century."). On another, Extreme Ways, he sounds like the ghost of Joy Division's Ian Curtis ("When you have listened to something like Joy Division as much as I have that influence is going to come through.").

And now comes the big slog. His promotional duties may bring him here next month, then he has a five-month tour followed by a further 15-month jaunt which may see him play here at the end of this year or early 2003.

* 18 is released on May 13.