Moby's 1997 CD, Animal Rights, alienated a large chunk of his fan base—and he didn't necessarily care, at least until after the album came out.
Known up to then primarily as a techno artist, and one of the best in the genre at that, Moby shocked fans with a loud, punk-infused rock album. His audience responded by making Animal Rights the worst-selling record of his career.
If it were entirely up to Moby, the music he'd put on an album now might be even more jarring.
"If I was just making music for myself, I would be making the strangest music and no one would probably want to listen to it," Moby says. "Like the music I listen to at home, I listen to a lot of really quiet, romantic ballads. I also listen to a lot of Pantera. And I listen to a lot of really weird electronic music. So, if I was just making records for myself, it would be a combination of those three elements. So, you'd have, like, death metal, weird electronics and slow, quiet ballads."
The Animal Rights experience, though, made Moby realize he can't make records in a vacuum; at least not without putting his popularity in significant jeopardy.
"It was after that that I realized I didn't want to make records that innately alienated people," Moby says. "So my ethos since then has been to try and, I don't know, make music that people can find a place for in their lives. And that does mean sort of like softening some of the rough edges. It means not playing 160-beats-per-minute techno tracks. It means not playing big, over-the-top punk-rock songs. But I feel like if I'm going to work hard on a record, I should try and do all that I can to end up with something that people can actually, as I said, find a place for in their lives."
Consequently, the last few Moby albums have been a bit more stylistically predictable. Fortunately, he has retained enough of his sense of adventure to keep his albums from being bland or boring.
His latest, Hotel, in fact, suggests that he might have settled into a bit of a stylistic groove, a departure for an artist who has made a career of showing his eclecticism.
Born Richard Melville Hall and nicknamed "Moby" at an early age after Herman Melville, he first made an impact in 1991 on Britain's emerging rave scene with the top-10 single, "Go."
That breakthrough helped pave the way for a deal with Elektra Records, where his acclaimed 1995 release, Everything Is Wrong, established him as a worldwide force on the dance-techno-electronica scene.
But then came Animal Rights.
Ironically, the album was not foreign territory for Moby, who played guitar in punk bands well before he discovered electronic music and began playing synthesizers.
1999's Play seemed to repair much of Animal Rights' damage, as Moby again embraced techno-dance music as a prime influence, mixing in sampled vintage blues vocals. The album sold nearly 10 million copies worldwide, and he was widely hailed in the media as the artist who brought techno into the mainstream.
With his next album, 18, Moby again presented several new dimensions to his sound, showing poppier influences and rich, warm melodies.
Hotel is a logical successor to 18, with smooth melodies combined with brisk but understated beats on some tracks, lush balladry, and Moby's familiar dancier side. The biggest shift, more a progression than a departure, is toward more of a pop-rock-flavored sound. Songs like the spunky first single "Beautiful" and "Raining Again" show Moby has nearly as strong a talent for writing tightly crafted hooks as he does for laying down intoxicating beats.
Like his other albums, Hotel was recorded in Moby's bedroom studio in Manhattan, and he played virtually all of the instruments on the songs except for live drums.
What's notably different is the absence of sampled vocals, a signature element of Moby's sound throughout his career. Instead, Moby sings on many of the tracks, and when he employs a female vocal, the parts are sung by Laura Dawn.
Moby, who is said to have written some 4,000 songs that have never been released, says there was no preconceived plan to move away from samples.
"When I was writing the couple hundred songs that were written during these last two years, a lot of the songs did have samples in them," he says. "But I just didn't like them as much as the ones that didn't have samples. So it wasn't like a concerted effort to move away from using samples. It was more, I like singing, and the songs with the live vocals just spoke to me more than the songs that had samples."
Hotel's more organic sound should help the songs translate well in a live environment, especially as Moby will have a six-piece band on tour. The show will include quite a few songs from Hotel, plus a sampling of earlier material.
"It's an eclectic show, and it's dynamic and at times quite passionate," Moby says. "There are big, loud, bombastic songs and there are really quiet, elegant songs."
The show will be less elaborate in its staging than the one he took out on the road to support 18.
"The production is really good," Moby said. "It's just not as over the top as it was for the 18 tour. Especially in Europe, when we were doing the 18 tour, we were playing to 10,000, 15,000 people, and it was this gigantic production. There were four tour buses and three big semis and tons of shit. It was a huge, almost like Pink Floyd production. For this, we've just sort of scaled it back a little bit. The venues are smaller and we're just focusing more on the music and the musicians and not so much on the production."