(03.23.05) Shortly after 18 was released, I seem to remember an interview
with Moby where he laid the blame for depressed sales of that record
on the shoulders of the peer-to-peer file networks. “Kids,” he
claimed, “are trading my record instead of purchasing it.” I didn’t
buy the argument because every CD store I visited (and I visit a lot
of them, music whore that I am) had four to six USED copies of
18 in their bins. No, Moby, the kids weren’t stealing your
record; they just weren’t buying it because they thought it was
terrible.
I’m reminded of this as I listen to Hotel, Moby’s latest bid
for rawk star status. I must have missed the announcement where Moby
came clean with his desire to be a pop star; it’s the only rationale I
can find to explain why Hotel is a continuation of everything
that went wrong with 18. Gone are all the sumptuous textures
and orchestral flourishes that propelled the little idiot (and, no,
I’m not being an pretentious ass with the name calling, check his
publishing credits) into superstardom in the first place. Maybe he
never wanted to be remembered as the guy who imported the symphony and
the blues singer into the laptop and fused it all together with a drum
machine and a series of DSP patches. Maybe Moby just wants to rock
out; maybe he just wants to bring the lights down for an intimate
power ballad for a stadium full of his newest best friends.
Maybe. If that is the case, he’s certainly picked a tepid way to go
about it. While a few of the tracks on Hotel have a bit of a
hook (“Raining Again” and “Lift Me Up” for example, though even these
seem like Moby’s only fishing for minnows with the shallow hooks he’s
using), the majority of the tunes are pale narcissistic pop songs that
will be relegated to incidental music for Deepak Chopra seminars and
elevator musak for tired urban hotels struggling to stay hip.
That said, Hotel: Ambient is gorgeous. Packaged with
Hotel as part of a limited initial release, this companion CD
is an ambient retread of the record. His explanation in the liner
notes for the title of the record says, “I don’t feel like making
music that is airless and lifeless because I also really like people
and the messy miasma of the human condition and I want to make messy,
human records that are open and emotional.” Maybe it says more about
me than him that I find Hotel: Ambient to more evocative of the
human emotional experience than the trite lyrical content and shallow
pop constructs of Hotel, but Hotel: Ambient glistens
with charm and innocence, a seductive lure of slow tones and
fathomless textures that is far more than just aural wallpaper. This
is incidental music filled with longing and heartbreak, loneliness and
hopefulness. This is the womb of your hotel room: the space that
enfolds you, that holds you tight when you are separated from the ones
you love, that tries to alleviate your need for home with its tiny
amenities and spartan intimacy. Hotel: Ambient understands how
alone you can feel in a numbered room high above the world, and just
wants to hold you tight.
If you like what Moby did with Voodoo Child’s The End of
Everything (and even the ambient bits of Play), then
Hotel: Ambient will make you happy. It is just disappointing
that you have to put up with Hotel to get to it.
Hotel is out now on V2.
