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Full album stream: Moby (Hotel)
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Out of 136 votes - Similar Artists: The Chemical Brothers, the Orb, Orbital, Leftfield, Propellerheads
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Out of 136 votes
- Location: New York
- Genre: Electronic & Dance » Electronica
Editor's review
From first listen it's clear the cool, downtown grooves of "Hotel" aren't too drastically different from the laid-back sounds that permeated previous Moby albums, but that's not a problem--the guy's settled on a style and is content exploring the subtleties. One major development, though, is he uses no vocal samples here, letting his own voice (and that of duet partner Laura Brown) step boldly out into the light.
Biography
Where do we begin... in these days of fly-by-night musicians, Moby is somewhat of an anomaly. his first solo release, Go (voted one of rolling stone's top 200 records of all time), was released in 1991. in the ensuing 14 years he has had what is arguably the strangest career in contemporary music. he has made dance records and rock records and ambient records and heavy metal records. he has written classical music for movies and had platinum albums in almost every country in the western world. he has dj'd in clubs for 100 people and headlined glastonbury for 125,000 people. he has played punk rock in tiny bars in germany and he has performed at the closing ceremonies of the olympics for an audience of 2 billion people. he has had albums that have sold less than 100,000 copies worldwide (1996's 'animal rights'), and albums that have sold in the millions (1999's 'play' and 2002's ‘18'). he has remixed and produced everyone from david bowie to metallica to the beastie boys to aerosmith to new order, etc. he has toured with david bowie. he has sung duets with elton john, bono, michael stipe, lou reed, and many others. and yet he still makes all of his records at home in his bedroom. yes, moby has without a doubt had one of the strangest careers in contemporary music.
his new album, hotel, certainly continues in moby's tradition of making beautifully eclectic records. it runs the gamut from quiet instrumentals ('hotel intro', 'homeward angel') to big-chorus stadium anthems ('spiders', 'lift me up') to straight-forward electro-disco ('very') to ballads ('anyone but you', 'forever'), to new-wave ('where you end'), and everything in between. moby has, as always, played every instrument on the cd (except for the live drums...his friend scott fassetto did that...) and done all of the production. moby also sings on almost every song, although he is joined on a few songs by his friend laura dawn, who is the creative events director for moveon.org.
to complete the idiosyncratic diversity of this package, 'hotel' is accompanied by 'hotel-ambient', a beautiful and atmospheric collection of instrumentals that will relax even the most neurotic insomniac. oh, one last thing,whereas moby's past records have relied heavily on samples, this record is actually completely sample-free.
enjoy.
and if you're ever in the lower east side of manhattan, stop by moby's tea-shop, teany, and say hello.
