While listening to filmmaker David Lynch speak at the BAFTA Awards in February 2008, Moby had an epiphany. Lynch’s message – creativity for its own sake is a beautiful, wonderful thing – was a simple one, but it hit Moby with force. “At that moment, I decided to just make records that were more personal,” says Moby, “maybe more experimental, and a little more challenging, maybe not as easy to like, but things that I found to be artistically and creatively more satisfying. That was the idea behind making the new album.”

The album resulting from this epiphany, Wait For Me (released on June 30, 2009 via Mute), is a radical departure from Moby’s recent albums – last year’s paean to the dance floor, Last Night, 2005’s flirtation with modern rock, Hotel, the shimmering ambience of 2002’s 18, and the zeitgeist-defining melancholy electronica of 1999’s Play. In making Wait For Me Moby decided to forgo the expensive studios, state-of-the-art equipment, and big name guest artists. Indeed, a DiY approach pervades all of Wait For Me, from the recording process to the album cover. “A friend of mine shot the photos,” Moby says. “I did the art work. I made the record in my bedroom, and mixed it with a crazy punk rocker who got lost on the way to the studio every night.”

That “crazy punk rocker” is the legendary Ken Thomas, who has worked with everyone from The Buzzcocks, Wire to Sigur Ros and M83.
And while the music contained on Wait For Me is the sweeping, emotionally expansive music Moby has become known for, some of the songs bear the influence of Moby’s punk days, albeit in odd ways. “Mistake” is an homage to the emotional post-punk of Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen, while the title track’s depiction of quiet despair was inspired by Black Flag’s Damaged album.

Sonically, though, Wait For Me takes inspiration from a kinder, gentler era long before punk, before the dawn of rock ’n’ roll even. “I wanted to make a record that was beautiful and warm and open and inviting, and also a little more idiosyncratic and personal,” Moby says. “The way it’s recorded and mixed, it’s not supposed to be a bombast. The records that I find myself more drawn to are very minimally recorded old blues records, records that are quite austere and simple. So I did want this record to have that austere quality.”

While Wait For Me does have a certain Spartan feel to it, it is also a warm, intimate and conversational record. In order to try to achieve a one-on-one connection with the listener, Moby drowned Wait For Me in reverb and made judicious use of stereo panning. “The things that inspired me were the background vocals on ‘In the Ghetto’, the Elvis song, Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane, and ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ by The Flamingos,” Moby says. “And also eBay because through eBay I was able to buy a lot of old crappy equipment that served my needs perfectly: old reverbs, old delays, old amplifiers, old synthesizers, things that were technically imperfect but felt right to me.”

You can hear the ghosts in these old machines, and when combined with the cavernous reverb, long sustained guitar chords, warm strings, and the occasional torch song, Wait For Me may bring to mind the album’s catalyst – David Lynch and his work with composer Angelo Badalamenti. Lynch, in fact, has directed the video for “Shot In The Back Of The Head”, a song that also conjures up Phil Spector with its crashing waves of sound. It is indeed fitting that Lynch provided the inspiration for Moby’s creative rebirth on Wait For Me as samples of Lynch’s Twin Peaks appeared on the record that kick-started Moby’s career, the Top 10 1991 rave hit “Go”.

Wait For Me is aimed at connecting with the listener on an individual basis.

Band Members

Moby

Influences

david bowie, kraftwerk, roxy music, public image ltd, goldfrapp, tv on the radio, suicide, echo and the bunnymen, television, led zeppelin, grace jones, pantera, joy division, flaming lips, massive attack, donna summer, eno, nick drake, derrick may, the birthday party, bad brains, the feelies, polyrock, john lee hooker, george gershwin, blind willie johnson, the gun club, silver apples.

Website

www.moby.com