Send "Moby " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 What do people want from Moby? It's a question worth asking not just because of the lukewarm reputation he carries among many music fans but because Moby himself has spent so much time trying to answer it. The answer appears to be, resoundingly, "not what you've been giving us," and I'll wager that it's not the "innovative microsite" or photo book that arrive concurrent to his latest album, Destroyed. Recorded as he toured, late at night and lonely, the record finds Moby sober and living in Los Angeles (nice digs). He still possesses that particularly 1990s strain of self-loathing that doubles as egoism (he's @thelittleidiot on Twitter), and he's probably two facial tics away from being a living, breathing David Lynch character.One of the disappointing things about Moby is that his records and ideas are very simple even when he thinks they're very complex. Moby is 45, wealthy, and has deep thoughts about religion and food and friendship, but his umpteenth album is "a soundtrack for empty cities at 2 a.m." (his words). Do you find dark urban environments stark and eerie? Does air travel make you lonely? Have you ever felt isolated even when you are physically surrounded by buildings and people? You're either dealing with these questions privately or you're Thom Yorke. This is fertile territory, though: Artists have been mining flickering desolation for decades. Moby's key error is that while he was inspired by these scenes, Destroyed is the type of low-stakes atmospheric mush that lounges and airports and bars play to make you forget where you are (on "The Low Hum" a female voice intones, "Like a tourist in some strange hotel," moving on before she can get to "...listening to Moby"). It plays like a facile representation of these beautiful/melancholy environs instead of an exploration of them....full text |
| Guardian |
| Moby's 10th studio album is released alongside a £25 book of his own photos, in effect making the songs a soundtrack to the book. Music and pictures alike aim to capture the disjointedness of life on tour, which for Moby means snapshots of airport corridors and 71 minutes of lonely-as-a-cloud electro-wafting. Bearing in mind that music about touring is of more interest to the artist than to listeners, it's still easy to appreciate swathes of Destroyed. The best of it – an austere symphony called Stella Maris, the Chemical Brothers-meet-John Barry grandeur of After – does convey some of the rootlessness of constant travelling. Other segments of the record are given over to morose chill-out, conjuring the sleepless nights that reportedly inspired insomniac Moby to write the music. Elsewhere, there's a return to the cuddly Play era, with Lie Down in Darkness's mix of forceful female vocal and moping synth underlay. Even without the photos, Destroyed has something to say, just....full text |
| Culturebully |
| Destroyed stands as quite the milestone for Moby as it is his tenth full-length studio album, coming nearly two decades after he issued his self-titled debut. It also serves as somewhat of an artistic retrospective for the multi-faceted artist: A soundtrack to his own personal insomnia, Destroyed takes on a variety of sounds that have echoed throughout his entire career. While the familiar sounds that are laced throughout the album translate as rather comforting, the album itself seems to be the outcome of a rather crucial artistic period in Moby’s career. The electronic ease which flows throughout Destroyed comes at a time when it isn’t impossible for the average producer to shake a solid album out of their figurative sleeve. Recognizing this himself, Moby recently expanded on that the idea in an interview with Wired. “Now literally anyone with a laptop, or even an iPhone, can make decent-sounding records. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, it’s a lot more egalitarian, but it seems like there is something to be said for spending a long time figuring out how to make a record, and then spending a long time actually making a record. Now it seems like there is an awful lot of people making records that are quite good, but not an awful lot of people making records that are truly great. That’s the downside to remarkable software. You can sit down with Reason or Ableton and literally in a couple of hours make a very good-sounding record. But then a lot of people become contented with that, rather than pushing themselves to making something that sounds great.” This statement is increasingly crucial as the 15-track release plays out, but not in the sense that it reinforces the intent and execution of Destroyed, but that it questions its purpose. It would be a bit dramatic to suggest that Moby might simply be another faceless Soundcloud DJ had he started his career some two decades later than he did, but relating his aforementioned statement to how Destroyed actually plays out, such a conclusion might not be too far from the mark. Opening with the airy, winding synth of “The Broken Places,” the slow winding nature of the album is again stressed in the piano & beat driven “Victoria Lucas” and the bubbling “Blue Moon”; the latter being a track which also finds its pace through focusing on Moby’s calm, layered vocals. One aspect of the Moby’s music that hasn’t historically been as acclaimed as others has been Moby’s lyrics — often criticized as too scant to hold up to his rather impressive instrumental capabilities — but within a minimal framework, “Be The One” and “The Day” challenge this by each offering unique, emotional hooks....full text |
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