Moby
Natural Blues (Mute)
"Don't nobody know my troubles with God?" croons the soul sample, with more genuine pathos than you'd expect. Perhaps we're being too literal, but everyone must by now be fully aware of Moby's lengthy wrestling match with his Lord. Even if you've never heard a note of the man's music, you know he's a bald, vegan Christian in a hedonist's world (that's dance music), and that this gives him some grief. He got so confused between virtue and vice once, he made a very bad rock album. God, tellingly, didn't strike him down.
But lately, with the release of 'Play', Moby's loosened up, stopped making extreme dance music and extreme judgements and started, y'know, chilling. He DJed at last summer's Woodstock bacchanal and seemed to enjoy making sounds for the revellers to fuck to. The fantastic 'Natural Blues' - all rolling beats and emotional rescue - is the next step in his 12-point program towards a gentler psyche. Godspeed him.
Keith Cameron
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