PLAY IT AGAIN, MOBY

After great success in the electronic dance music scene, Moby’s career hit a rough patch after his 1996 indi rock album Animal Rights received lukewarm responses. The musician, sampler, songwriter and remixer born Richard Melville Hall responded by spending time experimenting and exploring, eventually releasing his fifth album Play in 1999. So despondent was he about a perceived lack of success, he seriously considered that Play might be his last release. In fact the album changed everything, though at first its success was far from assured.

When Play first appeared the response could best be described as muted. Sales were modest and reviews mixed. The Guardian (UK), for example, observed that Moby had "a magpie-like ability to pick the most interesting sounds from disparate genres and weld them together. What makes Play so effective is the way he's created a soundworld that's distinctively his own."

In the States, however, The Village Voice was less enthusiastic. "As a whole, Play is not a terrible record, but it is decidedly uneven. ... It's as though Moby's attention span has been temporarily hijacked by other people's ideas."

Part of the uneven response may well have arisen from the most innovative aspect of Play: its’ samples. Of course other artists, particularly DJs, had plundered existing music for inspiration and new sounds, but Moby found a refreshing take on re-voicing archival recordings. Mining excerpts from old blues and gospel recordings, he integrated them with his trademark electronica to produce a fresh and beguiling amalgam of electronic, ambient, rootsy, and spiritual music. Something about the blending of the past and present created a strange alchemy that slowly worked its magic on the music-buying public. But not immediately.

One of the fascinating aspects of Play is its journey to success. Often popular songs popular are then 'rented' by advertising agencies or film producers to add some contemporary pizazz to their soundtracks. Moby did it the other way around, building interest by extensive licensing of tracks from Play to a whole range of third party users; brands as diverse as Volkswagen and Baileys Irish Cream liqueur. Eventually—amazingly—the entire album had been used in one domain or another. And slowly this exposure resulted in accelerating sales. The artist himself was non-plussed.

"The week Play was released, it sold, worldwide around 6,000 copies. Eleven months after Play was released, it was selling 150,000 copies a week. I was on tour constantly, drunk pretty much the entire time and it was just a blur." [Moby, Wikipedia]

At the time of writing, Play’s sales exceed 12 million. And it is not just punters who love it. Those who cite Moby as an influence include some heavy hitters: The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, even Radiohead.

For many, Moby’s Play was a defining musical moment, especially as its rise in popularity coincided with the world clock ticking over into a new millennium. Its innovative and unusual samples made it unique, a difference that seeped into the consciousness of the music buying public and remapped what was cool. If it sounds less exotic in the mid-2020s, that is largely to do with familiarity and does nothing to diminish the laid back enjoyment offered by this groundbreaking album.

© Bruce Jenkins - April 2023