Moby: "Dance producers trying to get top 40 success simply makes me sad"

Moby has spoken out about the current state of mainstream dance music, stating that producers that use their talents for top 40 domination make him "sad", even going so far as to say that his "happiness is actually diminished by their bad records."

We caught up with Moby at the Masonic Temple in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on the night of his first ever live ambient performance. Amongst talking about the significance of the show and his skewed love of Los Angeles, he was candid about his feelings towards producers that use their talents to make compromised music, and questioned the true worth of aiming for commercial success over artistic integrity.

"Some people are very good at being disingenuous," he said. "But now there's no real reason to be. In the old days if someone compromised they'd sell 10 million records. These days you'll get 10,000 downloads. So why even consider it when there's no incentive? But the reality is that there aren't many people that are pursuing commercial success and notoriety that are also making really inspiring music."

The night marked not only Moby's maiden live ambient performance but also the relaunch of his 2005 album 'Hotel:Ambient', a muted B-side collection to the alt-rock record 'Hotel' which passed largely unnoticed upon its release, but he feels ranks amongst some of his finest work to-date. Though while he has been making ambient music for the majority of his 30-something year long career, he has always had reservations about exploring the live capabilities of this music.

"When it comes to playing live ambient music there really isn't much of a performance component to it. [In these shows] it's different because half the show has vocals, and some stripped down versions of some of my better known songs, but the stuff that's just ambient there's no performance. It's just a guy standing there.

"Ambient music live only works in a few different places. You can't do it at a festival because you wouldn't hear anything, and in a rock club it would feel kinda scummy. So it needs to be done in a very site specific space."

Housed in the dramatic masonic temple on the periphery of the famous central Hollywood cemetery, Moby shifted back and forth from his sanctuary behind the decks and his guitar and microphone, offering up a mixture of hushed ambient tracks and reworked classics such as 'Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?', 'Memory Gospel' and 'Sweet Apocalypse'. He was joined by two young female vocalists and the performance was visually supported by the work of close friend and legendary filmmaker David Lynch.

The final track was his massive 1990 breakout record 'Go', which features the eerie synth sample from Angelo Badalementi's 'Laura Palmer's theme', and when coupled with Lynch's visuals and a singer that looked oddly like Laura Palmer, you were in Twin Peaks fanboy heaven. While the rest of the crowd sat and bobbed their heads to the beat a group of 10 or so of us gathered at the back and raved out.

With there being many different incarnations of Moby over the years, it's hard to imagine his work being better suited to anything other than pensive ambient textures in peculiar live venues.

You can pick up a copy of 'Hotel: Ambient' here, and hear Mixmag's exclusive premier of 'Blue Paper' below.