Moby : Destroyed

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mobydestroyed.jpg" alt="Thievery Corporation : Culture of Fear" />Let's face it.<span>  </span>The ‘90s are back.  <span style="font-weight: normal">Moby, in his own way, takes part of this renaissance with...
Thievery Corporation : Culture of Fear
9.0 Mute
2011 

Moby : Destroyed Let’s face it.  The ‘90s are back.  PJ Harvey (QRO album review) is touring again, The Beastie Boys (QRO album review), Björk, Daft Punk (QRO album review), and the Chemical Brothers (QRO album review) are releasing new material and Lady Gaga just looks like ‘Vogue Tour’ Madonna (with arguably the same talent).  Moby, in his own way, takes part of this renaissance with Destroyed.

In his own way because his style not only has evolved since the heydays of “Rock the House” and head banging “Bodyrock”, it has detached itself from ‘The Scene’ making his sound more accessible to the mainstream audience – and the advertising agencies around the world – while still keeping its Mobi’tude.

Destroyed is the younger sibling of 2009’s Wait for Me and naturally picks up where “Isolate”, a delicate instrumental, left off.  With “Broken Places,” as if the isolation ended up breaking something within himself and launches him somewhere else, a dark place with just memories of human contact.  This song sets the tone of Moby’s 10th LP.  Not unlike Gorillaz’s The Fall (QRO review), Destroyed was produced during sleepless nights spent in random hotels overlooking sleeping cities with his only companion buildings and streetlights.  But, unlike Damon Albarn, Moby is not reflecting on his travels, he embraces the commonality and the emptiness of 4 a.m. city life.

Instrumental songs, from the second half of the album, in particular “Stella Maris”, “When You Are Old” or “Lacrimae” give the feeling of inhabited man-made spaces while “The Violent Bear it Away” shows the slow awakening of a city.

Meanwhile, the party has moved to “Sevastopol” and all that is left is “The Low Hum” of the “After” with the poems of “Victoria Lucas”.  This last song is the most early-Moby sounding tune from the album with Inyang Bassey’s humming lying on top of old school beats.

Bassey’s deep vocals also take front stage in “Lie Down In Darkness”, “The Right Thing” and “Rocket” while his other muse, Kelly Star, sings on “The Low Hum” and sounds like her soul is being pulled out of her vocal cords on “After”.  They are both, at a different range, great complements to Moby’s instrumentation and one wished more songs had their imprint.  That leaves the LP’s first single, “The Day” which, with its “South Side” meets “We Are All Made of Stars” feel, makes it stand out a little too obviously.

Destroyed comes with a book of photos Moby took while touring that showcases his vision of the world, between crowded arenas, just empty spaces and urban nightscapes

Destroyed, while not as depressing as Wait For Me, maybe the darkest Moby album to date.  It is also more detached, as if the bold alien has become one of Fringe‘s Observers.  He “was the one when you needed love” but he’s “in love with this constellation.”

MP3 Stream: “After”

{audio}mp3/files/Moby – After.mp3{/audio}

 

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