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It's a shame that most of Moby's songs are instrumental. The world's most well-known Christian vegan techno pioneer would probably have a lot to say, but his wordplay is consigned to his occasional punk-rock songs, most of which are too boisterous and relentless to decipher. Then again, Moby's musical vocabulary more than suffices; six years after his first release, the 32-year-old New York guitarist, keyboardist, producer and DJ has recorded numerous albums that are both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, in genres ranging from punk to ambient to electronic dance music. As a follow-up to his brilliant 1995 techno breakthrough Everything Is Wrong and the 1996 punk/hard-rock item Animal Rights, Moby has compiled the work he's done for film and television on the just-issued I Like to Score (Elektra). It includes his dance-floor classic "Go" (a searing reworking of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks theme song); "First Cool Hive" from Scream; "God Moving Over the Face of the Water" and his cover of Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades," both from Heat; and the recently recorded "James Bond Theme (Moby's Version)," which will appear in Tomorrow Never Dies, the latest installment in the swanky spy-film series. Relaxing in a hammock on the roof of his loft in Manhattan's Little Italy, Moby gave voice to his sometimes controversial stances in a conversation with WW. WW: How did your version of the "James Bond Theme" come about, and how did you techno-ize it? Moby: I got a phone call from MGM United Artists last spring, and I guess they were disappointed with the last James Bond movie. Basically, no one under 25 went to see it, so they thought, "Why not get someone to redo the James Bond theme to try to appeal to a younger audience?" and they asked me. It seemed like an interesting idea. I tried to make it sound like the theme from an early-'70s cop program. Does it bother you as an artist to have someone essentially say, "We want to sell this product to young people, so let's tie it in with rave culture"? Depends how objectionable or questionable the product is. In this case they're selling a movie, so it's not like they're selling guns or cars or cigarettes or something. But it's a James Bond movie! That's exactly what they're doing. Yeah, but it's fiction. And I think it's really important to make a distinction between fiction and reality. There are so many things going on in the real world that are worth getting upset about that I don't think there's as much to get upset about in the world of fiction. Don't you think that violent films affect society drastically? I don't know. They don't affect me. I've seen just about every violent movie ever made and I'm still a law-abiding citizen. The same thing is true of most of my friends. I don't know anyone that owns a gun or anyone that's been involved in a fight even. The last fight I was in I was 18 years old and I think I got hit once and fell down. In essays and interviews, you've been critical of people who eat meat and smoke cigarettes, yet you also espouse Libertarian viewpoints. How does that jibe? My understanding of the world from an ethical perspective is that any action an individual wants to do can only affect them. If you want to take drugs, if you want to drink, if you want to get tattoos, if you want to kill yourself--that's all your choice. The state or other people can't make ethical pronouncements about that. Any action that might potentially affect another person or another sentient creature--like smoking cigarettes and eating animals--compromises the rights and will of other people. That's why I think those things fall into the realm of legislatable actions. Another of the juxtapositions I see with you as an artist is that a lot of things you talk about are organic, yet your music is usually electronic, which in a way is antithetical. Antithetical according to our culture. The only real natural instrument is the human voice. A guitar is just as much an artificial construct as a synthesizer. It's just that guitars have been around a lot longer. So conventionally, it seems like a more organic instrument, but if you're listening to a recording of a guitar or a synthesizer, essentially you're listening to the CD, and it's going through wires and it's on plastic. There are very few natural music listening experiences, unless you're in your bedroom listening to someone sing. That's not to disqualify anything, because I think essentially whether music is made by some guy playing guitar or an orchestra or some kid sitting in his bedroom with a sampler, the only thing that really matters is the subjective response of the listener. What about your religious beliefs? How do you justify saying "I'm a Christian" given the scientific evidence and-- Scientific. Ha ha ha. I think that's kind of funny, like scientifically disproving faith. The assumptions you're making about my beliefs, well, that's not what my belief structure is like. I love Christ. And to whatever extent I can understand who or what God is, I think that maybe Christ is God. The word Christian is so weird because it means so many different things. Does it mean Greek Orthodox? Southern Baptist? Catholic? Calvinist? All these denominations are supposedly Christian, yet they have nothing in common with one another. I love Christ but I don't really consider myself a Christian in any sense of the word. Faith is a strange thing. As an outspoken advocate, how do you feel about the state of the animal rights movement today? The only way people can eat meat is because they don't know how it's actually created. If you were to make people ethically responsible for their actions and say whatever you eat you have to raise and kill yourself, I don't think there'd be too many meat eaters. Then again, if people were raising animals themselves, they'd probably be a lot more compassionate than the people who run feed lots or industrial chicken farms. You can take any relatively sensitive person to a hen farm and show them the disgusting condition that the chickens are kept in, or the pigs or the cows, and there's no way you can be a carnivore after seeing stuff like that, unless you really have some sort of chemical imbalance. But when you go to the store and you buy meat, it's sanitized and there's no reflection of the process that led the piece of chicken to be in the supermarket. You don't see the chickens packed into cages, shitting on each other, going insane. But as far as the animal rights movement, I think what happened was it ma a lot of progress, but in so doing, it's challenged a lot of people who have strong cultural and economic interests in the animal industry. And they've fought back with a propaganda war. Was naming an album Animal Rights your way of weighing in on the situation? Yeah, I think it's one of the most important things in the world right now. What will your next album be like? Hopefully pretty eclectic. Most of the records I've made until now have been pretty eclectic. The record I'm working on seems like it'll have a couple of dance things on it, maybe one or two punk-rock songs and some quiet instrumental things. I like different types of music and I don't really see the need to like one type of music at the exclusion of anything else. I love techno music, but I also love punk rock. |
