Happy 25th Anniversary to Moby’s fifth studio album Play, originally released in the UK May 17, 1999 and in the US June 1, 1999.
Certain albums will always take you back to a time and place. For me, Moby’s Play instantly transports me back to late nights in 1999 working in advertising, trying to come up with a great idea with my trusty art director, Mike. Like me, Mike was a total music head, so we relished these late-night working sessions where we could order pizza, blast a new release, and try to pluck inspiration from the ether.
For these nights, Play felt tailor-made. With its cinematic outlook and seamless blending of soul, blues and gospel with electronica, Play was urgent and vibrant. It’s innovative use of sampling and profound emotional depth felt like a new world was opening up and as the album’s popularity grew, it created a seismic shift in the landscape of electronic music and its cross-over potential for a wider market.
It also spawned a healthy debate on where the line is between sampling/interpolation and cultural appropriation, as it quickly became a ubiquitous juggernaut with every song eventually being licensed in commercials, films and TV shows.
The fact that Play was everywhere you turned from cool cafes to packed nightclubs—and every space in between—is a testament not only to the universal appeal of Moby’s creations, but also the breadth of moods and emotions he captured in a sprawling one-hour journey. There was no escaping it. Everywhere you turned, someone, somewhere was blasting it from their speakers. In bookshops, in cafes, in restaurants, in house parties, in clubs. It was omnipresent.
From the album opener “Honey,” with its evocative sampling of Bessie Jones’ “Sometimes” against urgent pulsing piano and propulsive beats, the tone is set. The track’s infectious energy and merging of driven beats and soulful vocals draw you into a new sonic world.
The production on Play is a masterclass in the art of sampling. Moby’s ability to tune in to and blend disparate sounds into a cohesive whole is evident throughout the album. On tracks like “Find My Baby” and “Natural Blues,” Moby draws from haunting field recordings featuring Boy Blue and Vera Hall respectively, and marries them with laid back grooves, lush synth beds, and chunky guitars to hypnotic effect. “Natural Blues,” in particular, stands out with Hall’s haunting vocal line from “Trouble So Hard” set against propulsive beats and melancholic stings, creating a poignant and evocative soundscape that strikes right at the heart.
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This sense of introspection and reflection continues across tracks like the lamenting “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?,” a gospel-infused lament that delves into the themes of apology and redemption against a simple yet expressive arrangement.
It’s Moby’s ability to create these sparse yet enthralling sonic landscapes that permeates throughout Play. Several instrumental tracks act as ambient meditations drawing a range of emotions from the listener, as Moby creates sonic mantras of melody. Tracks like “Everloving,” “Rushing,” “Down Slow,” and “My Weakness” wash over the listener and carry you deeper into the sounds that soothe and crash around you.
But it’s not all chillout central, as Moby mixes laid back grooves with more hyped tracks like “Bodyrock” that busts loose with euphoric energy or “South Side” that intwines rock and electronica so seamlessly. And tracks like “Machete” call back to Moby’s trance inspired hits like “Go” with a darker, more aggressive sound with industrial overtones reflecting his roots in the underground rave scene.
“Porcelain” has since elevated itself as perhaps the most iconic track on Play with its delicate piano riff and ethereal vocals. With a minimalist arrangement, the track carries you through the sense of longing and melancholy it contains as sweeping synth chords feel like flashes of vignettes of memories past.
On the other side, “Run On” perhaps best encapsulates the myriad of tones and textures that Moby is fusing together. Reimagining the traditional gospel song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” and refashioning it as a charging dance track, Moby manages to maintain the song’s inherent urgency while adding in more modern musical twists. It’s this ability to merge sounds that are deeply rooted in history with sounds that are strikingly contemporary that makes Play such a compelling and rewarding listen.
With Play, Moby manages to weave a rich tapestry of sounds that pays homage to the past while forging a path towards the future. A synthesis of sounds, styles, and genres, Play manages to remain fresh and timeless. It is at once a nostalgic reminder of a transformative era of music as one century passed and another began, as well as a timeless journey through soundscapes that are just as fresh, relevant, and transformative today as they were twenty-five years ago.
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