New York, NY · electronic

Moby

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Play-era electronic hymns from rave's elder statesman — euphoria with a conscience, gospel samples still lifting fields.

Moby, born Richard Melville Hall in New York in 1965 and raised in Connecticut, took up guitar and piano at nine and spent the 1980s playing in underground punk bands including Vatican Commandos, Flipper and Ultra Vivid Scene before turning to electronic music. He moved to New York City in 1989 and built a reputation as a DJ, producer and remixer.

His 1991 single "Go" made his name in clubs, especially in Europe, where it reached the top ten in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Through the mid-1990s he scored eight top ten hits on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, among them "Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)" and a reworking of the James Bond theme, while producing under various pseudonyms. Everything Is Wrong (1995) was well received; Animal Rights (1996), a harder punk-rock turn, cost him much of his audience.

Play, released in 1999, brought him a far larger audience: built around samples of archival blues and gospel field recordings set against house and downtempo production, it produced tracks such as "Porcelain" and "Natural Blues." Initially overlooked, it went on to sell some 12 million copies, and its single "South Side," featuring Gwen Stefani, reached the US Billboard Hot 100.

He has released steadily since, including the album 18, followed by Hotel, Last Night, Wait for Me, Destroyed and Innocents, moving between electronic, dance and downtempo styles. He later returned to punk rock with two albums recorded as The Void Pacific Choir, then softened again on Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt and All Visible Objects, while also issuing long-form ambient records on the side.

A 2018 performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led Deutsche Grammophon to invite him to rework his catalogue with orchestra; the result, Reprise (2021), recorded with the Budapest Art Orchestra, became his highest-charting record in over a decade and was followed by Resound NYC in 2023. He is also known publicly for his veganism and animal-rights advocacy, and has written two memoirs, Porcelain and Then It Fell Apart.

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electronic