Definitely Moby

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and Moby is preparing for another hectic day in front of the telly.

“I promised myself beforehand that I wouldn’t get sucked in, but now that Michael Jackson’s court case has started I can’t watch anything else,” he rues in between sips of herbal tea. Actually, he pronounces it ‘erbal’ but I refuse to countenance America’s unilateral decommissioning of the letter ‘h’.
“It’s interesting that after all of the stuff last year with the Nation Of Islam, he’s stopped trying to make it a race issue,” the boy Melville resumes. “I don’t mean to be slanderous, but very few people here consider him to be black. He’s spent a lot of time and money trying to move away from his African-American heritage. It’s kind of funny when you have Elizabeth Taylor and Louis Farrakhan both getting involved in Michael Jackson’s legal defence. They’re strange bedfellows.”
Moby’s other reason for flouting the law which says no rock ‘n’ roller can be out of bed and dressed before noon is that he was on breakfast-making duty.
“My girlfriend had to be up at six-thirty to go to work, so rather than grunting ‘Have a nice day’ at her I thought I’d spoil her a bit.”
This lovey-doveyness extends to Moby’s new Hotel album, which finds him coming on like a Marvin Gaye for the post-E generation.
“I’ve had two serious relationships in the past few years, which haven’t worked out but were nevertheless infused with a lot of love and caring,” he acknowledges. “There’s some sex in there, sure, but really it’s a record about love won, lost and drawn!”
Does Moby ever bonk to his own music?
“I was listening to one of my more song-oriented records while I was, as you so charmingly put it, ‘bonking’ and instead of being swept away on a wave of passion found myself concerned that the hi-hat might be too loud.”
If Moby’s looking for a soundtrack to love, I can heartily recommend the first two Massive Attack albums.
“I tried it four or five years ago with Mezzanine, but my date just looked at me and said, ‘Oh no, you’re not?’” he laughs. “I guess a lot of people have used that record for the same purpose.”
Asked for an alternative, the 39-year-old immediately nominates the first Goldfrapp album.
“Even though the songs are about fascism and fucking, it’s quite romantic. Actually, of all the people making music at the moment, they’re my favourites.”
The last time we caught up with Moby in 2002, he’d swapped drug and alcohol-free monasticism for, well, anything he could get his hands on. Have there been further lifestyle modifications or is he still on an almighty bender?
“The honest and thoroughly unglamorous answer to that question is I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m at peace with myself,” he reflects. “I’m neither the puritan I was in the early ‘90s nor the mad hedonist I was a few years ago when pretty much anything went. Which isn’t to say that the next time we meet I won’t be orbiting the room!”
When he wasn’t piecing Hotel together in his own New York studio, Moby could be found stalking the reformed Roxy Music.
“I actually re-structured one of my tours in order to catch their shows. Some people might consider flying back from New Zealand to see Roxy Music in Los Angeles obsessive, but it was worth every minute of the chronic jetlag that ensued. One of the most exciting moments of my life was talking to Brian Eno on the phone in 1992 because I was remixing one of his tracks. I hung up and ran around my flat in circles like an excited schoolkid!”
It’s a tough call, but AK-47 held to my head I’d have to go for the cover of New Order’s ‘Temptation’ as my favourite Hotel moment.
“What’s happening in New York now is that all the kids of 20, 21 are obsessed with new wave from the early ‘80s. They’re listening to the same music that I listened to when I was that age, which is great because it makes me feels less old!
“Anyway, I heard ‘Temptation’ being played in the vegetarian tea-shop I own with my ex-girlfriend and was struck by how poignant and romantic the lyrics are. The original kind of obscures that with its anthemic chorus, so I stripped it down and got a female friend of mine, Laura Dawn, to sing it.”
A native of Pleasantville, Iowa – “It sounds made-up but it’s a real place” – Dawn features on no fewer than 8 of Hotel’s 14 tracks and is without doubt a major star in the making.
“She moved to the city to become a rock star and ended up getting involved in a progressive left-wing organisation called Move On, which was very active in trying to remove George Bush from the White House. That they failed is something I still find very distressing, but I guess you have to move on.”
Talking of young people with ‘80s new wave fixations, what does Moby make of The Killers?
“I think the same of them as I do The Feint and Interpol, which is I’d rather be 23 and discovering those records now than reminiscing about buying them in 1981. Some of these bands have, almost on a wholesale level, sonically and aesthetically borrowed from stuff that’s come before them but I put my cynicism aside and recognise that they’re all making good records. They’ve got me interested in indie rock and contemporary music in ways that I haven’t been for a while.”
Of course, Moby and The Killers have a mutual friend in David Bowie.
“We’ve emailed a few times, but I haven’t seen him since either the lollipop in the eye or the heart attack,” he concludes. “The thing about David is that he’s a survivor. No matter what life throws at him, he comes back stronger than before which is a quality I very much aspire to myself.”

Moby’s Hotel album is out now on Mute. You can also catch him live on June 19 when he plays support to REM in Ardgillan Castle.