Whether anyone realizes it or not, there are great battles of psychological extremes at work within these seemingly straightforward Pitchfork diatribes. As doggedly opinionated and viciously direct as we'd like to appear, a pen-wielding soldier is never fully in control of the personal bias and at-large influence that can taint his otherwise pure, Zen-like focus. The trick, say the masters, is to acknowledge your humanity (really!) and use it to your advantage. Trust your first impression. Don't believe the hype. And never forget that the music is why we're all here.
So, perhaps as a direct challenge to my consistent-- but never unchecked-- enthusiasm, Schreiber's assigned me to the latest from Moby, who's recording under the guise of Voodoo Child, which the Vegan One most prominently assumed back in '96 for his ambient The End of Everything. Now fresh from a smash world tour in support of 2002's 18, and still criticized in some circles for his lucrative stroll down Madison Avenue to coincide with 1999's soulful Play, here Moby seeks to reconnect to the dance floor and, as he says, the "underground." Baby Monkey's liner notes also relate Moby's rekindled love for "hard, sexy, straightforward dance music," borne of a quintessential late-night episode at a Glasgow warehouse party.
Given his widely publicized, somewhat nutty beliefs, Moby is an incredibly easy target. Some of his past efforts have been pretty solid. Some of his past efforts have been total fluff.
Sun-tzu says, "Disciplined and calm, to await the appearance of disorder and hubbub amongst the enemy: This is the art of retaining composure." Certainly nobody's enemy, Baby Monkey is still, in a word, hubbub. In the face of disorder and the opportunity to ground the enemy into bits, the writer must retain composure. As such:
Baby Monkey is a clinic in what's bad about bad dance music. There's no life breathing through these 12 flaccid tracks, each of which would've seemed regressive even in Moby's early-90s heyday-- today, each is a total anachronism. The production is shockingly gauzy and weak, and the result is an easily dismissed, second-rate throwaway that only the most devout Moby zealot could appreciate.
The bluesy funk of Play is largely absent, surfacing intermittently in the vocal samples of "Gotta Be Loose in Your Mind" and "Unh Yeah"'s gospel organ and piano tinkling. And Moby's earliest work showed more complex rhythmic structures and clever sampling; the driving intensity of 10-year-old tracks like "Besame" and "Go" are replaced by a petulant skiffle and metallic sterility that would sound best pumping from a dentist office P.A. The album's marginally shifting rhythms fluctuate a few BPM here and there, dipping into light techno ("Minors"), light house ("Last") and a light breakbeat ("Gone"), but there's never enough guts for the dance floor, nor enough smarts for the headphones. Where Moby should be shining behind the keys, "Light Is in Your Eyes" sticks out only for its soft, worn-out "We Are All Made of Stars" synth melody, and the obviously titled "Synthesisers" [sic] barely keeps its head above the same waters he tread with 1993's also obviously titled Ambient.
With so much great dance music being made today, it's a shame this will get more press than most by virtue of Moby's name alone-- which is supposed to be concealed by the Voodoo Child alter ego in the first place. But dance music accepts no revivalism-- especially when your update isn't as good as your original. So although it means stuff like Baby Monkey is hardly necessary, it is at least to Moby's credit that he's much better at moving into the future than at looking to the past.
