DJ-Turned-Pop Star: Moby performing in Tel Aviv.
This DJ still knows how to sweep us away.
Moby began his career as a DJ in the United States 20 years ago. At the end of the '90s he turned, surprisingly, into a pop star who liked to wield a guitar - even though he doesn't really know how to play. He was, and remains, a record spinner - although this isn't obvious on his most recent albums. But in his performance Tuesday night at the Picnic Festival in Tel Aviv, the DJ in Moby was resurrected. He cut a great appearance thanks to his disk jockey instincts.
Moby, who was born in New York as Richard Melville Hall, neither spins records nor juggles laptops. His actions are not that of a DJ, but his strategy is. The most important characteristic of a DJ is the ability to create an exciting musical continuity, with no dead spots, and with a dynamic that builds up and releases tension. Moby accomplished this like an expert engineer. The content wasn't always high-level, but the machine thundered forward from the first moment until the last. Since there have been several appearances in recent years by artists with electronic tendencies that did not sweep us away (Air, MGMT, Zero 7 ), Moby's success at doing so is not something to be taken for granted.
The performance had two virtues - both connected to the DJ instincts of this small, bald man who, after every number, said "thankyouthankyouthankyou" to the audience, somewhat obsessively. The first virtue is the clever ordering structure: an aggressive opening that reached a climax with "Go," the transition to a calmer pace with "Why does my heart," a renewed cooking of energy, an additional slowdown with "Porcelain" and "In this world," and then the start of an unquenchable fire.
The second virtue is reinvigorating recorded versions of songs into performance versions. These weren't always the best versions. Some were even rough. But they were different than the originals. This is always important, and in the case of Moby, whose hits have been ground down and become a sort of musical wallpaper, it is especially important. There was no feeling of wallpaper in the air in the performed versions, with an excellent black singer who was an enjoyable antithesis to Moby's weak, white voice.
Was there the opposite sensation of ecstatic euphoria? I didn't feel it. At the beginning of his career, Moby created this euphoria naturally and effortlessly. Even his biggest detractors, and there are no lack of them, were forced to admit that he has, or had, the rare talent of creating a floating feeling with his music. But in 2011, 15 years after his artistic peak, and 10 years after his commercial peak, the floating is not completely natural. The careful engineering of recorded tracks and technical aids are required for it to occur.
At the end of the show, right at the end, it really happened, albeit with slight difficulty. "I've been closing all my performances with this song for 10 years," Moby said, as the opening chords of the artificial synthesizer on "Feeling So Real" flooded pavilion 1 of the Tel Aviv exhibition grounds. This great song really shouts "mid '90s, a New York club, [high] on ecstasy," and here, in 2011, Tel Aviv, without ecstasy, it has to sound like "Feeling almost real." But "almost" was a lot, and it was a sharp end to a winning performance.
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/moby-delivers-a-whale-of-a-performance-in-tel-aviv-1.373124
Interview with Moby on the Israeli Radio Station 88FM
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Moby interviewed on the Israeli radio station 88FM, a few hours before his concert in Tel-Aviv, 12 July 2011. Interviewer: Galia Giladi.
One week in Israel - Music: Swear by Moby
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Shoot on Canon 550D, lenses used Canon 18-55 KIT and Tamron 55-200. Color correction MBL.
Music: SWEAR - MOBY
