Early Nineties musical pioneer Moby will return to El Paso to headline this year’s Neon Desert Music Festival. Fusion magazine caught up with him from his L.A.
home, where he’s busy prepping for the show.
You helped to establish a musical genre in its infancy. How do you feel about the state of the Electronic Dance Music scene today? Do you feel some sense of ownership, or has it progressed further than you would have imagined twenty years ago?
My musical background is really strange, because when I was quite young I started playing classical music, then when I was thirteen or fourteen I started playing in hardcore punk bands. I didn’t start making electronic music until I was around nineteen or twenty, and that would’ve been around 1984, or ’85. At that time, the reason I started making electronic music is because so many of my musical heroes were experimenting with synthesizers and drum machines and samplers and I just found it really inspiring. So, I don’t necessarily think of myself as helping to invent a genre, because really all I was trying to do was imitate my heroes. Imitating people like Kraftwerk and New Order and early Depeche Mode. As far as what’s happened with electronic music now, I mean, I think it’s amazing, because it’s everywhere. I mean, the genre of electronic music in the early nineties was very, very underground and quite small. Now, if you look at it, almost every pop record is made by an electronic producer and you have these huge raves with twenty, thirty, forty thousand people, so it’s kind of remarkable to see how huge the world of electronic music has become.
I read that a lot of Destroyed was written very late at night while dealing with insomnia on tour. Is that a recent development, or have you always had trouble sleeping?
I’ve always been a bad sleeper, even according to my mom, when I was a little baby I never slept very well. Something about going on tour and sleeping in different hotel rooms and crossing time-zones just completely throws off my sleep schedule, and so I’ve spent years and years, if not decades, just sitting in hotel rooms late at night, desperately wishing I could sleep. So, what I did on the last tour was work on music at three o’clock in the morning in hotel rooms rather than just lie in bed miserable with the fact that I have insomnia. So, yea, a lot of the music on Destroyed was created late at night in hotel rooms while I had really bad sleeplessness.
Do you like dub-step, or are you as puzzled as I am?
Dub-step makes a lot of sense to me when I’m at a rave or a party and there are ten thousand kids with their hands in the air and there are these huge sound systems for those big bass lines. In that context, it makes sense to me. I guess I really like the evolution of dub-step. From some ways it started in the late eighties and early nineties with a musical genre called Jungle, which is just really fast, break-beat oriented Techno. Jungle sort of evolved into speed-garage, which evolved into two-step, which evolved into dub-step. And drum-n-bass also evolved from jungle. I guess, I like dub-step’s lineage and it’s history. The music itself, makes most sense to me in a big place with twenty thousand people with their hands in the air.
What is your go-to vegan recipe?
I’m a terrible cook, so my go-to vegan recipe would be anything that’s really simple that I can’t screw up too much. For example: spaghetti is hard to mess up. Luckily, I live in L.A. where there are so many good vegetarian and vegan restaurants that I don’t have to cook all that often, but when I do, I tend to make really basic, simple things that I can’t mess up.
This is a pretty played-out question, but what are your desert-island, can’t-live-without, top three albums?
It’s a really good question, it’s just a really hard question, because I couldn’t imagine only being able to pick three records. I would probably pick… I guess number one on my list would be Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols. Number two would probably be Protection by Massive Attack and number three be… (long pause) John Lee Hooker’s Greatest Hits.
Which is your favorite music festival to attend?
The thing is, I’m kind of provincial, so, my favorite festival to attend is the Silverlake Music Festival in L.A. because it’s so close to where I live. It’s one of those things where even if- well also, it’s quite a good festival, but even if the bands are terrible, I can always be home in five minutes. Whereas some festivals- like, one year I went to Burning Man, and I know Burning Man is a very unconventional festival, but you realize, like- to get to Burning Man you have to fly to Reno, then you have to rent a car and it’s just a huge ordeal just to get there. Then, if you get there and you don’t like it, you’re kind of stuck. I think I like a good festival where I can be home in five minutes.
At which is your favorite festival to perform?
I’ve been playing at festivals for about twenty years now, and of all the festivals I’ve played at, my favorite is probably… It’s a festival in Serbia called the Exit Festival and it takes place in a Thirteenth-century castle in a town called Novi Sad. It’s the most beautiful Thirteenth-century castle and there are usually about between eighty and 100 thousand people there. One of the reasons I love it is that it was started for political reasons. It was started to oust the former dictator Milošević, and then it just kept going as a music festival.
Why were you against “Blue Moon” as a possible single from Destroyed?
A little background for that question: To choose a second single from Destroyed, Moby enlisted the help of his fans in the form of a poll. The song “Lie Down in Darkness” was selected, despite it coming in third by a wide margin. For the third and fourth selections, fan feedback was sought again, but a clear favorite “Blue Moon” was looked over in both cases.
I wasn’t against it at all, it was just that we could only pick one, and it came down to three or four different choices and we ended up choosing the one with the most votes. I don’t think we’re really releasing it as a single, but the guys from the band Holy Ghost! just did a remix of it, so we’re releasing it, but at this point, the whole idea of a single seems a little strange, because at this point in my career I don’t get a lot of radio play, so putting out a single is more of a fun excuse to get interesting remixes done and release something, but never with the intention of actually having commercial success with it or getting it played on the radio. It’s almost like a fun form of communication between me and the people who are willing to listen to the music that I make.
Where do you see (or, at least, where would you like to see) popular music headed in the next twenty years?
In a strange way, I think the music world of 2012 is healthier than it’s been in a long time. The major labels are slowly dying and as they die their influence becomes less and less. I have a feeling all the big, cheesy, manufactured pop music over time is going to sort of go away, or at least become smaller and smaller, because it’s so much less profitable. The only reason anyone makes big pop music like that is to make money, and so I feel like the people who are just trying to make money out of music will hopefully move on and do something else and leave music to all the musicians who are doing it because it’s what they love. If I look at the future of music, it’s interesting because every aspect of music has changed- the way it’s made, the way it’s sold, the way it’s heard, where it’s heard, but the only thing that hasn’t changed is how it affects people emotionally. So, I guess my hope is that people continue to make powerful, beautiful, emotional music.
Have you performed in El Paso before?
You know what? I have. I’m sure that I’ve played there once; I might have played there twice. The first time I played in El Paso was- it would have been 1994. I was on tour with Aphex Twin, Orbital and the Utah Saints, who were a techno band. I remember we played a small-ish club/theater in El Paso, and I could understand why, if you googled it, it wouldn’t come up, because it was quite a while ago. I might have also played there in early 2000. I got roped in to opening for the band Bush on an mTV Campus Invasion tour. I think we played in El Paso, I’m like, ninety percent sure we played in El Paso, but I could be wrong, because I toured for such a long time, my memory isn’t as great as it once was, but I’m pretty sure of those two times. But what makes this different is that I’ll be doing a DJ set, so I guess the other times I played were live shows with a band, and this time it’s going to be more of a big party.
What do you expect to experience at the Neon Desert Music Festival?
Well, I was looking at the lineup and I really like how eclectic it is. The times I’ve been to El Paso and Juárez, I never really know what the right or wrong thing to say is, but I just find El Paso and Juárez to be really fascinating cities. There’s just, like, a dynamic, almost futuristic quality to the people there. I just find it to be a really inspiring place.
Any acts you’re looking forward to seeing?
I’m hesitant to say anything, because whenever I pick one or two acts, I feel like I’m slighting the others, so in the interest of Swiss-style diplomacy, I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to seeing everybody.
TXT: Tyler Dudley