RAVE FAVE: Moby  by Neil Strauss
Option Magazine #48, Jan/Feb 1993 pg 61

	Dance music, especially rave music, is very audience based,"
says Moby, one of the hottest DJs on the underground rave scene. "It's
really all about the audience and audience response. Where other music
is more cerebral, this music is more visceral."
	Moby speaks for his people, but more importantly he listens to
them; he knows what they want, and they listen back. On a recent night
at the New York City club Webster Hall, a mop-top teenager wearing an
oversized, hooded shirt emblazoned with a logo for a nonexistent
laundry soap, hands out flyers and yells over the techno mix, "There's
this underground rave, NASA, going on next week You should come; three
weeks ago, Moby was there."
	Four years ago, the 27-year-old, self described Christian lent
credibility to dance parties as a creative DJ who always had the new
singles and knew what sounds to add to them. Now that he's not just a
spin doctor, but a recording artist - every hour, every night, a Moby
single plays at a dance space somewhere inthe world - Moby's mere
presence turns parties into raves, clubs into warehouses, dry ice into
smoke.
	"Being a DJ puts you in a unique position, where you're not
only the person playing the music, but the person making it," he says.
"When you're a DJ, you have a way of market-testing your own music."
His first club smash, "Go," with Twin Peaks soundtrack music and
second-long vocal samples stacked on top of a hyper house beat, is
ample payoff for Moby's years of market research - of playing not just
what the audience wants, but what the audience doesn't know it wants
yet. But Moby's a wise man. "If you go to a rave," he says, "the focus
is the audience. The performers play for half an hour, 45 minutes. And
it's nice because I can't tell you how many rock'n'roll shows I've
gone to and been bored stiff.'
	Coming from a guy who started out playing punk rock, the
statement is significant. Many artists who chart club hits began their
careers as DJs, but Moby (born Richard Melville Hall, and allegedly
the great-great grandnephew of Moby Dick author Herman Melville) came
into dance music from the other direction. "I started studying music
when I was ten, and became a DJ to pay the rent, ' he says. "Before
that I was an alternative, hardcore kid. DJing opened my eyes to the
fact that it didn't have to be four guys with a guitar."  After moving
from jazz and classical training to jamming in punk bands, he started
releasing a slew of techno singles within months of each other under
such pseudonyms as Brainstorm, Voodoo Child UHF and Barracuda. Now
that his name has become familiar, he's done remixes for his hero
Brian Eno and even worked on some Michael Jackson singles, including a
new version of "Beat It."
	Moby's self-titled LP on Instinct Records is a compendium of
12-inches from the past three years. It shows how he has taken
American house music back from the British and created something as
new as it is derivative. Though the collection doesn't coalesce into a
thematic whole, it does flow with the juice that makes Moby such a
powerful figure in rave culture.  Behind the mechanical synth lines,
spitfire samples and the almost monotonous rhythms that characterize
the music, it's obvious he has a tight grasp of melody and
composition. This adds not just a human element, but a sense of
emotion as well. Though Moby is as interested as any other electronics
musician in using samples you can't recognize, he also adds chords,
odd tonal juxtapositions and unfamiliar key signatures to a music
meant to be accessible the first time it's heard.  Moby's there are
dance music luminary who feels as passionately about Kraftwerk as he
does about Erik Satie.
	While his music is hard fast and (some say cold Moby himself
embodies the exact opposite aesthetic. He has a warm personality, an
easygoing nature and concerns which stretch far beyond the techno
scene. Though he wrote a song called "Next Is the E," Moby hasn't
touched drugs in eight years - or animal products, or even
automobiles. He wants to keep the environment as clean as he keeps his
body. One of my jobs is to provide a responsible face to
Christianity," the clean-cut college drop-out says.  "Rave culture
right now is a lot about hedonism, but its important to its success
that it becomes political, a force for change."
	Rave culture began with all the markings of a short term fad.
To make a lasting impression on society, Moby suggests it needs to
grow and develop beyond itself. By bringing together different people
of different races and backgrounds, and urging them to set aside
social stigmas and just dance, the rave scene has set a hopeful
example. But that's not enough for this musician who feels the best
way he can change the system is from within it. "There have been a lot
of AIDS benefits and voter registration booths at clubs," says Moby,
probably the only rave kid to write letters to the Wall Street Journal
criticizing its political position. "Part of my job as a musician and
public figure is to be a good example and be as aware and as informed
as possible."

Instinct, 222 W 14th St. NYC 10001