This Was My Dream
I know this sounds overly pessimistic, but sometimes,
in fact actually I'd say most times, your dreams don't come true.
A few months ago, inspired by some well-received reviews here on
Documentary Evidence and good interviews with various
Mute luminaries, I decided it was time to try interviewing
Moby. Moby has been a musical hero of mine for
many years and I've always found his self-deprecating
nature rather refreshing in a world where the cult of celebrity
often elevates egos to levels unimaginable by earlier generations
(in fact, during the recent Art Rocks documentary, Moby
is emphatic that he doesn't think of himself as a celebrity, even
though he clearly is). I always thought it would be a long shot;
I find myself now remembering the Greek myth of Icarus and flying
too close to the sun, and frankly I feel a little foolish for thinking
it might come off.
Unlike some of the Mute-connected artists I've interviewed
over the past eight years, I knew Moby would be significantly less
accessible than others. Any of the interviews I've done have been
through a gentle, friendly and generally direct approach, and in
almost every case it's worked just fine. In the case of Moby, attempts
to contact him directly via Twitter
would be futile (at the time of writing he has 1.3 million followers),
his bandmate Phil Costello in metal band Diamondsnake
(who I interviewed last year)
politely suggested his manager. And so I finally found his team's
details, got in touch and very humbly said that I knew he was busy
and so proposed four very short questions that I hoped would be
so small and simple as to be relatively easy for such a busy person
to answer. Sometimes my naivete embarrasses me.
Even so, I wasn't terribly surprised to hear via
his management team this week that Moby wouldn't be able to answer
my questions. So, in the extremely vain and ridiculous hope that
one day Moby might stop by my little site, think twice and contact
me, here's the questions I asked. Let's call it a non-interview.
1. In the last two years you've reformed your first
band, joined a blues-rock group (The Little Death)
and convened a metal band (Diamondsnake), toured the world DJing
dance music and released yet another eclectic (but this time mostly
electronic) album. Would you describe yourself as a stylistically
restless individual?
2. Play sounds like it caught you somewhat
unawares with its - justified, I think - success. How did that success
change the pressure on you for 18 and the Mute albums that
followed?
3. How did you meet Daniel Miller
and begin your work with Mute in the UK?
4. Destroyed has a real isolated chill
to it, a real sense that surveying the world from the perspective
of a hotel room at 2am whilst on tour isn't all it's cracked up
to be. There's that line in 'The Low Hum' that says 'I'm in
love with isolation'. But I don't know, the accompanying photos,
the effect that that life seems to have had on you to produce this
album doesn't make it sound like it's all it's cracked up to be.
Could there be another volume of Destroyed written every
time you tour? Or was this album a conscious effort to tackle the
feeling head-on?
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