MOBY: REPRISE, TRACK BY TRACK | FEATURE

 

David Nobakht takes the occasion of the noted American electronic musician’s latest release, an orchestral reimagining of some of his old favourites, as cause to luxuriate in nearly 30 years’ worth of Moby’s eclectic back catalogue.

 

Electronic music has been getting an orchestral makeover for quite a while. For example, there has been minimalist composer Philip Glass’ sublime deconstruction and reconstruction of Berlin-era Bowie albums; more recently, house and techno floorfillers once played at Manchester’s Haçienda have been recreated in a classical manner. Now, the Deutsche Grammophon label are releasing a new Moby album, Reprise.

With Reprise, innovative electronic artist Moby has rebuilt some of his older tracks in an acoustic and orchestral style, with help from the Budapest Art Orchestra and a few outstanding guest singers chosen to suit the songs, as opposed to their star status. What follows is a breakdown of what songs have been picked, and from which album they originally came.

The song that pretty much brought Richard Hall to these shores from America at the start of the 1990s, when he’d only recently settled on the Moby pseudonym, is an early feature on Reprise. At the time, he was making music whilst living in a derelict factory in a pre-gentrified New York: no running water or toilet, returning bottles and cans to get money for food. Go, a UK top 10 single in 1991, is a surprise inclusion and might have one scratching their head as to how the Twin Peaks-sampling techno anthem might be orchestrally or acoustically manoeuvred, but all works out well – even with the barest elements of the original acoustically recreated here, Go still kicks hard on the percussion-propelled Reprise version, which has more in common with John Barry than John Digweed.

Michael Mann’s slick Los Angeles heist thriller Heat, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, featured two Moby songs. The first was his cover of Joy Division’s New Dawn Fades, the second an instrumental, titled God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters, that scores the film’s final dramatic scene. God Moving… could have easily become a club track on Everything Is Wrong, Moby’s fairly club-orientated debut album for Mute Records; instead, he overlaid and looped his piano parts with violins, keeping God Moving… as essentially a classical composition without the need for the sonic interference of a drum machine. The Reprise version goes stirringly straight for the heart, an enhanced version of the original recreated with an orchestra and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson.

Play, released in 1999, was an album Moby had little expectation of finding great success. Its predecessor Animal Rights’ angry post-punk guitar sound met with a mixed response, but listening back today holds up pretty well: Moby’s US label, though, dropped him soon after it was released. Many who were expecting an ambient dance album in the vein of Everything Is Wrong did not go along for the ride.

The tracks on Play were initially created using a guitar and some rickety studio equipment, with the music respectfully arranged around the sampled vocals of blues and gospel greats such as Bessie Smith and Vera Hall. In his second memoir, Then It Fell Apart, Moby recounts the joy and pain Play’s unexpectedly massive success brought him; for us the public, each track became embedded in our consciousness via their use in adverts and films. Play also inspired the release, title and tracklisting of Natural Blues, a compilation of the original blues and gospel artists sampled by Moby.

Reprise kicks off with Everloving: taken from Play, it’s been stripped back, reinvented and sounds as sparsely emotive as Ry Cooder’s opening theme to Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas. Another track from Play follows it, jazz vocalist Gregory Porter and Tennessee singer Amythyst Kiah taking the Vera Hall-sampling Natural Blues to a higher state of emotion. Written in the aftermath of a breakup, Porcelain is one of Moby’s best-loved tracks; here, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James duets with Moby on a version which actually outshines the original.

He’ll Roll Your Burdens Away is a 1960s gospel song by The Banks Brothers with the Back Home Choir, and the inspiration for Play centrepiece Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad. The Reprise version again improves on the original, gospel singer Deitrick Haddon and Apollo Jane giving it their all on this new take. Play might have suffered from overexposure at the time due, yet hearing these songs freshly reconstructed on Reprise amplifies the strength of the originals and breathes new life into them.

Following Play was 18: released in 2002, named after its number of tracks, and a continuation of the previous album’s creative process, sound and platinum sales. The Thin White Duke-acknowledging We Are All Made Of Stars is stripped back to its barest bones here, while one of its bleakest tracks, The Great Escape, is now recreated with Nataly Dawn, Alice Skye and Luna Li’s vocals becoming the prominent part of the track. Extreme Ways, like a Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street offcut in its initial version, was electronically rejigged for 18, while Reprise finds it sounding rawer and more spacious than the track that became well known for featuring in the Bourne films.

Moby once described David Bowie as a “demigod” and himself as a “bald degenerate with an accidental hit record” – now the pair were neighbours and friends in New York. The teenage Moby had bought a $2.99 cutout copy of Bowie’s Heroes LP, and later recalled listening to its title track for the first time: “the most beautiful song” he’d ever heard. He could not understand why “The Devil Went Down To Georgia was on the radio 20 times per day and Heroes was relegated to cheap vinyl.” Years later, he would be in his apartment playing acoustic guitar whilst Bowie, sitting on a sofa, sang Heroes, and as a result a beautiful version of that very song is covered on Reprise.

Hotel, released in 2005, featured no sampled vocals. Andrew Eldritch of Sisters of Mercy was pencilled in to sing on Lift Me Up, but the dark lord could not be found, and Moby sang on pretty much all the tracks. More guitar-based electronic pop than either Play or 18, Moby seemed to have channelled his love of New Order and Joy Division into Hotel. Lift Me Up reflected on the growing lack of tolerance building up in America, and its subject matter is even more evident in its powerful acoustic reinterpretation here, elevated by a choir.

 

 

The 2013 release of Innocents saw Moby provide guest sports for Cold Specks – whose I Predict A Graceful Explosion album is enthrallingly dark soulful blues – Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, and Mark Lanegan. Three of its songs feature on Reprise, with the original ode to “the dark night of the soul” The Lonely Night again featuring Lanegan. This time duetting with country legend Kris Kristofferson for Reprise’s defining moment: an unheralded track that sat near the end of an album turned into a magnificent, stirring epic.

Almost Home originally featured the distinctive vocals of Seattle singer Damien Jurado: a live rendition, filmed at LA’s Fonda Theatre in 2013, is a real treat. The Reprise version has a delicate vulnerability to it, thanks to Welsh multi-instrumentalist Novo Amor, folk band Darlingside and regular Moby guest singer Mindy Jones. Final track The Last Day again enlists Darlingside, with Skylar Grey joining on yet another affecting beauty. If you were moved by these songs on Innocents, expect to be blown away by the Reprise versions.

Much more than a stopgap album to mark time during disorienting days, as a whole Reprise is a timeless set of songs which does what all great art should do: connect emotionally.

Moby’s Reprise is released on Fri 28 May on Deutsche Grammophon. Info: www.moby-reprise.com

words DAVID NOBAKHT photos TRAVIS SCHNEIDER