Moby Play

This January 1999 release from Moby is widely regarded as his best or at least his most ambitious work to date, winning a "Best of the 90s" status from Spin, Rolling Stone, The Onion's AV Club and, interestingly enough, The Des Moines Register. Well known in the rave-techno-ambient-electronica scene, Moby's music shows the future direction of this genre and probably much else too. It's not just the music of rave clubs anymore. It is the music of a mass-society that finds itself awash in voices, information, and echoes from a cultural history that has turned increasingly inward. Play's subtleties -- buried samples and sonic textures -- allow the medium to comment on the message.Play's liner notes contain Moby's views on Fundamentalism, prisons and crime, his Vegan diet, the holocaust, and non-Pacificist Christians. He also lists a number of quotes from world religious leaders about animals. He adds, "These essays are not really related to the music, so if you hate the essays, you might still like the music, and if you like the essays you might hate the music. Who knows, maybe by some bizarre twist of fate you'll like them both." Moby's views on animals as food may not pertain to the tracks on Play, but there is no doubt that his spiritual orientation does pertain. Composed of Philip Glass-like minimalist melodies and samples from Hip-Hop artists, old Blues and Gospel songs, Play employs the materialist-spawned tools of what Walter Benjamin called the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in order to engage our digitized souls in a sustained self-examination.Play begins with "Honey" (sampled from Bessie Jones' "Sometime") which leads into "Find my Baby" (Boy Blue's "Joe Lee's Rock"). Both songs have some heavy synthesizer overlays that establish one of the album's motifs along with a theme of loss and longing for the return of a lover. "Porcelain," an intimate confession of dreams of death and jealousy, a song of farewell and regret (vocals by Moby), opens with the heavy synth, acquires a slow beat, and finally a piano melody tripping out note by note that re-emerges in many of the later tracks. "Why does my heart feel so bad?" (Shining Light Gospel Choir) asks that question again and again, the contemporary equivalent of a liturgical recitative. "Southside," words and vocals by Moby, describes a dark day and night marked by endless cycles of routine: artificial light, rain, television, driving across town packing weapons, and picking up friends. "Rushing" begins slowly and returns to the piano of "Porcelain," picking up tempo and arriving at a rushing-stream, Glass-like melody somewhat reminiscent of Moby's "God Moving over the Face of the Waters" and the dramatic fourteenth track, "Everloving." "Bodyrock" loops fast-paced samples of Bobby Robinson's "Love Rap" (performed by Spoony G and the Treacherous 3). "Natural blues" is based on samples from Vera Hall's pleading "Trouble So Hard" where the major question is "Don't nobody know my troubles but God?" In the eleventh track, "Run on" (samples from "Run on for a Long Time" by Bill Landford and The Landfordaires), Moby levels the gospel guns at us. You can "run for a long time," but "God Almighty is gonna cut you down" if you don't help your fellow man or if you "go to church just to signify," among other things. "If things were perfect" is a spoken word piece where Moby meditates on a cold, empty city at night, wishing for summer. The next three tracks-"Everloving," "Inside," and "Guitar flute and string"-are instrumental. Another spoken-word track, "The sky is broken," observes the morning after a storm, acting as a reprise to the confessional "Porcelain."

If I had the time, and space, I could write a term paper about this seminal, remarkable album from one of the world's great musical artists, Moby. But that would probably bore readers (and me) to death.What I will say is that Play almost single-handedly changed my musical life. In a sense. It was the late 90s / early aughts and I was just waking up to a new generation of musical artists like Radiohead, Moby, The Chemical Brothers and learning about how electronic music and digital technology was transforming music in ways we are still trying to understand. I had heard Moby on the also seminal soundtrack to the film, The Saint and was kind of blown away. I decided to buy a CD and, after acquiring the cheekily-titled I like to Score I bought Play.Wow. Just Wow. Moby was using samples, combined with his own original compositions to create completely new songs, but he also was a pretty good bespoke song writer. Play weaves a marvelous musical tapestry, with a variety of existing, usually obscure source material -- such as a virtually unknown song by Southern Gospel group BIll Landford and the Landfordaires (Run On) – to which he adds own musical enhancement, sometimes beats, sometimes background chords, sometimes melody to create something completely new. The opening track, Honey, sets the tone with its combination of a “call and response” type of African American tune with a fierce drum track, and Moby’s trademark muscular piano.Then he effortlessly weaves in, a few tracks later, the achingly beautiful Porcelein, which has become a Moby standard and one of his most beloved songs. Here, he inverts the formula, and most of the song is his music and lyrics, with a sampled backround vocal of a man singing “woman”. Again, wow.I could go on, but if you like Electronica, you like great music, drum, piano, guitar, great song-writing, and can stomach sampling done in a way that you probably have never heard before, Play is for you. In some ways this is the album that really put Moby on the map. And oh, what a country the elfin, balding musical geek is. Thank God Moby exists in our world.

Have always wanted this album so I bought it.

Always liked this album and always will.

I don't buy a lot of new release vinyls because I often feel like it's just not worth it. This is not exception. It's a blah pressing. Not particularly dynamic, just not overly exciting. But, it's my wife's favorite album, so I got it. The pressing is fine. It's generally flat but it was quite dirty. If you get one, I would urge you to clean it because otherwise it will likely damage your needle. Overall, I do not believe that this is worth the price if you have another format and/or a streamable version.

Moby's "Play" is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's definitely my favorite electronica album, and there were so many hits ("Southside", "Run On", "Porcelain", etc...) off this album that it's easy to see why. Even the tracks which WEREN'T hits are extremely well done and very interesting. The lyrics especially are surprisingly good for this kind of album. Moby's voice isn't bad - I happen to like it a lot even if it's not necessarily for everybody. Every track here is fun and interesting which is ultra-rare (especially given the number of tracks). There's also a wide-range of emotions, pacing, and genres on display here - several of the tracks sound like they could be from a different artist or album. My personal favorites are "Run On", "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" and "The Sky Is Broken" (this is a strange song for the album, but I like it). I think this is an essential album for ANY electronica fan and I would argue that non-fans of the genre would have a hard time disliking it. Moby struck gold with "Play"! Absolutely recommended!Highlights include:the entire album!

Un muy buen disco que nunca pasa de moda y debes tener en tu coleccion

Top de linha Moby

Quel plaisir de redécouvrir cet album en vinyle! Qualité sonore exceptionnelle!

Great album. Sounds even better on Vinyl. Recommend this purchase. 4 records in a gatefold.

18 brani e neanche un filler! Straordinario nella sua eterogeneità, un tripudio di suoni ed idee. Moby è un compositore geniale.