Moby is going to help you sleep or keep you up all night
Moby has made quite a respectable living making folks move their feet.
These days, his music will put you to sleep. Literally.
In case you missed it, Moby just released four hours of music that’s meant specifically for sawing logs.
That should come in quite handy for night owls attending Electric Daisy Carnival this weekend. Speaking from experience, sleep comes at a premium during EDC week, which officially begins at Caesars Palace on Tuesday morning during EDMBiz, a three-day conference that precedes the three-day festival.
Moby is slated to deliver the keynote speech Thursday afternoon, thanks to an invite from (ahem, wait for it) Insomniac, the aptly named, in this case, promoter of EDC Las Vegas. We chatted with the mononymous musician, and he told us all about the new music and his new book, “Porcelain” (which, incidentally, he’ll also be reading passages from at EDMBiz and signing).
First, the siesta soundtrack, “Long Ambients1: Calm. Sleep.,” is available for free download. Moby originally composed the sounds for himself, but when he was done, he figured why not share. “I thought, you know, why not just put it out there for free and see if people can find a use for it in their life,” Moby says.
“What I found is a lot of ambient music, the musicians can’t restrain themselves. They add drums, they add vocals, they add weird noises and jarring things. And so I wanted four hours of music that had nothing poke-y or jarring or noisy,” he adds.
Mission most definitely accomplished. In true yin and yang fashion, Moby also recently put out something else that will keep you wide awake and inspire you to stay up late. “Porcelain,” his memoir, is quite a read. Turns out, Moby, born Richard Melville Hall, can really turn a phrase, which shouldn’t be surprising, given his relation to Herman Melville.
He exposes a lot of himself in the book in a way that’s honest, including scenes such as the night when he sabotaged seven years of sobriety because of a breakup and then obsessively scrawled the words “Don’t call her!” on his door with a marker to prevent himself from drunk-dialing an ex in predawn hours.
It’s an incongruous contrast to Moby of today, who recalls a show in Chicago a few years ago in which he was backstage, drinking organic tea and reading. “I was a sober, 48-year-old guy,” he remembers. “And then I put down my white tea and closed my copy of the Economist, and walked onstage in front of 75,000 20-year-olds. … I still keep waiting for them to realize that I’m way too old to be there.”
That’s not likely. Moby, who’s been acquainted with Insomniac founder Pasquale Rotella since the pioneering days of dance culture, when the scene revolved around warehouse parties and any notions of a festival like EDC were a fleeting fantasy at best, is old school, and he gets it.
“When middle-aged friends of mine ask me about Electric Daisy and why people go,” he says, “I simply say, ‘Have you been? Have you seen the level of production?’ You know, when you go to see the band, the production is focused on the band. When you go to one of these events, everything is focused on the audience.”
SLIPKNOT SO MUCH
The show featuring Slipknot and Marilyn Manson originally slated for the MGM Grand Garden on Friday has been postponed because Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor recently had spinal surgery and is probably recovering at home here in the valley. Taylor, clearly tough as nails, reportedly was walking around with a broken neck. There’s a new date and venue for the show, which will now be Aug. 21 at T-Mobile Arena. Refunds are available at the point of purchase (or automatically via axs.com), and fans will need to buy tickets for the new date when they go on sale at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Read more from Dave Herrera at reviewjournal.com/music. Contact him directly at dherrera@reviewjournal.com and follow @rjmusicdh on Twitter.
