Moby Talks To Sonicstate

Moby has just returned from the European portion of his tour where he played to tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Primarily, the tour was to promote his new album Wait For Me, which sees Moby choosing to work in his own home-based studio and keeping things on a personal level. The result is an organic and emotional body of work, which on the face of it is technologically agnostic.

As you can imagine, Moby is a busy boy, but we were able pose him a few questions:

SS:This album saw a return to working in your own environment, rather than in commercial studios. Do you find that this connects you more to the process? For some people having "people taking care of stuff" lets them focus on the higher aspects of the process, rather than getting stuck into the minute editing of th the hi hat or whatever. Are you an endless tweaker, how do you know when to stop?

Moby: i can definitely fall into the trap of losing objectivity as a result of working alone(not being able to see the forest for the trees). but being able to work in an environment wherein i don't feel self-conscious is worth it, from my perspective.

SS: Wait For Me sounds quite emotional, with both simple and and massive orchestral elements - did you work with strings or do you create your own sounds, what instruments do you play yourself?

Moby: i used some really nice acoustic string libraries for the strings, usually mixed in with older synth strings from old analog and digital synths. the instruments i play on the record are guitar, bass, piano, keyboards, drums, percussion, and some vocals.

SS: I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that you work with some kind of DAW and virtual instruments as many people do now - what is your choice, and have you found it to help with creativity, do you have favourite hardware synthesizers, if so what?

Moby: i use hardware synths when i have to(plug ins), but i prefer to use stand alone synths when i can, as i think they generally sound more interesting. i also like the fact that older synths and keyboards have inherent limitations. i like working with limitations.

SS: Are you the sort of person who must have the latest in music technology or eBay addict? What was your last successful acquisition? How do you keep up with it all, there's so much stuff being released in hardware and software?

Moby: i'm not really to concerned with having the newest and the best, as long as what i have works well for me. the last thing that i bought on ebay was a bee-gee's drum machine from 1978. yup, a bee gee's drum machine. it's sonically, uh, limited.

SS: You've taken the transition from album to live more than once, how do you approach it and what are you using for this tour to help you (presumably) play older songs as well, I would love to know more about the band and the setup?

Moby: the live set-up is quite elaborate, with a 3 piece string section, drummer, keyboardist, bassist, 2 vocalists, and me playing guitar and keys and percussion and singing. some songs can never be played live, but most of the songs can be worked on so that they make sense in a live context.

thanks
moby

Moby begins the US leg of his tour on September 17th at Rams Head Live in Baltimore. Check Moby.com/live for full up to date information.

Thanks to Sean at Roland, and others who helped to make this happen.

More Information

• Moby.com
• US Tour Dates
• Bee Gees rhythm machine

Moby's new music Sounds like Ultra Vivid Scene (4ad anyone?)

10-Aug-09 03:13 PM

why in this day and age do you put written text interviews online? No vid cams? no feild recorders?

11-Aug-09 10:27 AM

Well, if you can persuade Moby to spare the time to do us an interview like that, I'm ready..

This was all that was on offer.

11-Aug-09 11:13 AM

Moby's work is good and varied. But more importantly for me, he prefers the sound of hardware to soft. Im still not entirely convinced by softsynths- kore 2 and reaktor are exceptional, though- in that there is always a "je ne sais quoi" missing when you use them. I dunno...everytime i hear a "commercial" release with synth on, 9/10 you can spot the difference, even with all the compression, and £0000 outboard ( or softboard? plugins)

12-Aug-09 04:01 PM

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