Month: April 1999

Like recent Chemical Brothers and Fat Boy Slim hits, the more memorable songs on Moby‘s Play (V2/JBO) are built around snippets of black voices, in this case blues singers. Brief bits of yodels and catch phrases repeat until each rasp becomes part of the computerized rhythm track. The neat contrivance would be of less consequence if Moby’s contribution to those tracks — piano glissandos and synth flourishes — weren’t so reminiscent of lowbrow romantic John Tesh. The emotional gap between Moby’s keyboards and the vocals they support is bewildering. Certainly, the voices he selected are transcendent, but that was the case even before they entered his hard drive. Elsewhere on the record, Moby lends his own self-consciously antiseptic voice to the potential hit, “South Side,” and cranks out his contribution to big beat, “Bodyrock,” complete with — you guessed it — a central rap sample. “Oh Lordy … don’t nobody know my troubles,” sings a woman on “Natural Blues.” For all Moby’s emerging tunefulness, Play would fail to convince her otherwise.

Musicians who make drum’n’bass, electronic pop’s avant-garde extreme, often incorporate the sounds of video games and children’s toys. Bogdan Raczynski mines everything from tin xylophones to windup noisemakers, plus a wide array of modern synthesizers, to construct his purposefully distracted music on Boku Mo Wakaran (Rephlex). Perhaps this vein of sampling is intended to provide familiar focal points amid the hallucinogenic goings-on. More likely, though, those sounds are important touchstones — the sonic memories that inform Raczynski’s work, most of which bounces around with the pace of an arcade game. The bass end hums like an ominous, circling death ray, while melodies (or their nearest equivalent) ricochet about at maddening speeds. There are moments of peace among the 26 tracks here, notably the elegiac closer, but Raczynski loses patience with patience fairly quickly.

Orbital‘s The Middle of Nowhere (London/ffrr) opens like nothing other than some forgotten, early-’80s Philip Glass opera: a mid-tempo orchestral panorama of controlled bombast below a soaring synthesizer accent. A full minute passes before a functional drum beat arrives, signaling that the rave circus has, indeed, come to town. What follows is such an idiosyncratic mix of sounds (a caged diva, swaths of exotica, a multitude of what can only be described as sci-fi effects) that the listener will have difficulty keeping track without a checklist. The hour-long, eight-track record continues in that fashion. Orbital’s Paul Hartnolls has commented on the barrage, saying, “It’d be bloody difficult to play at a cocktail party.” Best to just settle back and observe the passing throng, or join in. This is techno at its most flamboyant and worldly. Even private moments, like the delicate fissures of static that comprise the prelude to “Know Where to Run,” eventually transform into party anthems. Only a standard issue vocal track, “Nothing Left Part 2,” truly disappoints.