And continuing from where we left off, our great TL;DR adventure continues with five more albums.
In recent interviews with Moby that I’ve been reading the exact same sentiments are repeated every single time. The success behind the infamously-licensed Play (whored in adverts and such simply because it was the only way to gain exposure to the tracks because radios wouldn’t play the songs until the album had become famous) and the subsequent popularity caught a confused Richard Hall completely by surprise and he was sucked into the world of being big and famous which eventually began affecting his music – 2005’s Hotel was Moby’s attempt to create a slick, big commercial radio album but the project turned out to succeed so well that he felt the album had lost its soul as he listened to the finished creation. Ever since the world tour after Hotel the ‘accidental professional musician’ has taken steps back and navel-gazing for what he wants rather than what he’s expected to do in his situation. The low-publicity DJ tours harkened back to the man’s early days as a club DJ and last year’s Last Night was an (slightly uneven) attempt to nutshell over two decades of living and clubbing in New York City as a loveletter to the town. The new album Wait for Me completes the process. It’s effectively self-released, the promotional push is mainly online through the man’s own website rather than everywhere in media, it was recorded in Moby’s own apartment and features his close friends in guest vocals, and it has been labeled by the artist himself as an album for himself with no care as to how it’ll be accepted by others.
Like a lot of deeply personal albums, Wait for Me is fragile. It contains only a few more energetic moments and even those are washed with sadness. Its 16 tracks are contemplative and calm, guided by melody and mood. Rather than crafting something big enough to sound like a hit or to fill a club with dancing people, Wait for Me is made for dark rooms, solitude and headphones. It’s the only way to enjoy it – in a more distractive environment its steadily low pace and delicate sounds tend to get lost.
The first official single from Moby’s new introspective and moody follow-up to last year’s dance party Last Night, slated for release next month and titled Wait for Me, has now surfaced with a lovely and melancholy video. The beautiful, aching song’s called “Pale Horses” and the video’s offered by Pitchfork.
Wonderful stuff. one must say. Both the excellent song and the downright fantastic video. Wait for Me seems to be shaping up as one of the releases of 2009. And for those who are still missing it, you can still grab the album’s equally wonderful first offering “Shot in the Back of the Head” from Moby’s official site as a free download.
The recent Moby announcement and the sample song the man gave us got me into a small Moby kick and especially dwell into the man’s melancholy moodpieces – the sort of material that the upcoming Wait for Me is supposed to be composed of. He’s always been great at them as its where his combined genius in both melody hooks and atmosphere frolic together. It left me wanting to do an update of some of my favourite melancholy pieces of him as a little drum-up for the new album, preferably something overlooked. Then I thought about featuring a certain album of his in the 12 overlooked pieces of awesome article series but a problem arose: Animal Rights, an album where some of his most heartbreaking melodic work exists, is by no means awesome. In fact, it’s a very, very awkward album.
You see, Animal Rights is infamous for its abrupt style switch. After gaining ground in the club dance scene and scoring a couple of small hits as an electronic music wizard, Moby decided to randomly alienate himself from that world and return to his punk rock roots. Animal Rights is a vicious and angsty 50-minute collection of harsh guitar tones, raging punk ravaging and extended guitar noise suites. What might somehow work is that Moby doesn’t have the charisma to pull off the angry man routine and his songwriting skills do not extended on hardcore guitar rock, making the album sound like a long and utterly ridiculous tantrum attack. It has some value as an album to put on while angsting and hating on the world but even then its length and stuff like the 10-minute “Face It” still end up sounding more daft than relatable frustration. It’s been titled as one of the “classic failed albums” in places and quite frankly, it’s a title it deserves.
But amidst the guitar thrashing and overly long punk rock escapades lies a couple of the man’s saddest, most anguished melodic pieces that end up being completely unspoken because of the album they ended up being on.
As a surprise twist, the hit-and-miss master Moby informed us of his intentions to release a brand new album this year a while ago, just a year after 2008’s Last Night. The full set of details was released today.
Wait for Me is released June 30th, and its agenda is that it’s a personal album, recorded in Moby’s house and guest vocals being mainly friends, and the album is composed of quieter, more melodic and apparently mournful material. The man also says that he’s worked hard on making the 16-track album a cohesive structure, meant to be listened from beginning to end rather than handpicking moments here and there.
The first “single” / sampling is called “Shot in the Back of the Head” and its David Lynch directed video can be seen over at Pitchfork. And it’s a pretty damn good instrumental moodpiece that while doesn’t sound so mindblowingly amazing immediately (grows to be near it though), is a great sign of things to come and will most likely sound brilliant in its proper album context. I’m generally excited about the direction – Moby’s always been brilliant in doing melancholy moodpieces and I’ve found it surprising he’s never done an album full of the stuff before.
I am excited.
Check under the cut for tracklisting.
EDIT: an mp3 is now available
So last time when we checked up on 2008 in full, we were on a pretty downbeat note. 2008 was full of small and minor disappointments and it showed. That doesn’t however mean that there wasn’t any greatness in the year. Granted, there was very little superb greatness compared to many of the years before, but there were good things. A lot of flawed, but good things. And now it’s the time to round them up.
After the cut: the official Flinty top 10.
I’m interrupting the Indie Paws yearly retrospectives run (upcoming and planned ones) with a tiny bit of news that made me smile. In a recent Paste Magazine interview with Moby, whose this year’s Last Night was good but a bit uneven, the artist himself talks a bit about a new album that he’s already planning and hopes to release next year. What’s made me somewhat excited (already!) is the brief discussion on the style of the next album – “something very personal, very melodic, very beautiful”. While most of the man’s albums have been a bit topsy-turvy in evervarying style and quality, the man’s certainly got a knack for melodic and beautiful: “Living”, “Guitar Flute and String”, “My Weakness”, “Porcelain”, “Into the Blue”, “Love Song for My Mom”, “Everloving”, the list is as long as the man’s career. All absolutely stunning songs.
The still-in-writing new album is set to appear next summer or autumn according to the interview, I reckon it’ll take quite a while before any actual news start to emerge.
Everloving (from Play)
Well dear readers, it’s getting to be the end of the year now and there’s no interesting releases on sight anymore (outside Viola’s Melancholydisco 2 but that’s a remix album anyway) and I’ve heard most of the new releases I wanted to hear this year (damn for randomly forgetting that new Hotel Lights album – I even posted news about it here ffs) so I guess I’m qualified to say something about this year by this time already. And 2008 in music, well, it was disappointing.
Let’s talk about that in a bit more detail.