silktempest's Full Review: Wait For Me [PA] by Moby
MOBY's latest record for Mute Records (home of DEPECHE MODE since 1981) is another genre exercise from the Midas of electronic genre exercises.
An electronic virtuoso with all-encompassing eclecticism, MOBY has a shifting fanbase. Sometimes he is the vegan sphinx that crossed over to mainstream thanks to automobile ads and Blues samplers. Other times he is a cultist Techno forefather following his own retro muse. In between he keeps a bewildering career with drastic stylistic changes, struggling to keep her stylist status.
Wait for Me is a warm record of mezzanine instrumentals, female syrupy vocals and some outbursts of eclectic megalomania. Close to a PRINCE record, only without the funky hips and inevitable c'mons.
Division could have been about one of his obsessions, Ian Curtis' gloomy Post-Punk outfit. The melancholic epic mood fits well but there's more nostalgia than torment. If Post-Punk bands aged that drastically, they would be doing this kind of stuff. Not Jetstream. Division has an elegant Classic feel, indifferent to the world around. Pretty much as the author, in-between genre exercises.
Pale Horses fuses distorted violins and humming percussion from a netherworld. Add a touching female vocal and we have...Trip-Hop. MOBY wants BETH ORTON but it ends up sounding like DIDO...Classicist yet accessible reconstruction of an over-clichéd genre. Not even MASSIVE ATTACK does this kind of thing these days. A retro hit?
Shot In The Back Of The Head (great title) is a skewed affair. A morose detuned synth pattern unfolds unafraid. 1 minute and something RADIOHEAD discarded circa 1995 arrives. Bleached melancholia...Whale's lament liquefied over a shining plate. An expressionist track by a relentless perfectionist. Nice downward spiral.
Study War, what an irony. Impassionate speech samplers, ruminating pianos. This kind of African-American study MOBY has done for years, always on his mind, single-handed answer: peace. It is a " What's Going On" for the MP3 age. Or a mall gospel, as U2 one said during their Pop era - malls replaced cathedrals. Sampler-heavy message eats its own tail on every spin.
Walk With Me - a New Age pretending to be "ethnic" lament. KITARO? ENYA? Another understated female vocal. Opaque bell-like synth sound. Somewhere traversing JAPAN's 1980s hermetic fascination with Far East and grandiloquent 1990s Irish winds, MOBY finds a fragmented time-space self.
Before it reaches its brief conclusion, Stock Radio remembers listeners that this is a mood album , not a collection of songs. Even though MOBY remains an Electronic auteur. His curious and cautious worldview feeds regular exercises such as this one, what many Pop and Rock artists masterfully did.
Mistake enhances similarities. Grandiloquent strings recall MASSIVE again, MOBY detachedness does his best Dave Gahan and the chorus reminds you of a depressed PET SHOP BOYS. Not far away synths became faux guitars and reflective vocals walk on the shoes of stasis. Energetic and varied, falling short on emphasis. It is an ambiguous track. Much as the recording itself, this is somehow accessible, but won't sell millions of copies or downloads.
After much Space Age Jazz MOBY does his Blue-Eyed KRAFTWERK/NEW ORDER homage. Scream Pilots mixes pristine synths and a liquefied bass. A rubbery sonority follows, as in a Detroit hazy dream. Soundtrack to a Guggenheim documentary - or competent old-school interlude? I'm loving this record.
JLTF-1 is thicker and yet more sparse than its unnumbered counterpart. A Trip-Hop sketch blurred by glitch, it remains between dreams and live action, in a netherworld of about-to-be.
JLTF combines seaside melancholy with low-key changing moods. It ebbs and flows gloriously from the mouth of a DIDO clone. Like a robot elegy, the kind only MOBY could have spawned these days. Elegant hurting.
A Seated Night is another exercise on unfolding paper bags blowing in the wind. Not necessarily what you want but something MOBY needs to disentangle his psyche from being in merchandizing playlists and cult books.
Wait For Me - the title track - is as unrepresentative or, either, representative as one wants. Unrepresentative because it is a song and Wait For Me, the record, is a bricolage of sonic exercises with a few songs thrown in for good measure. Unrepresentative because MOBY is a fractured, eclectic auteur. This one sound equal parts THIEVERY CORPORATION and MOLOKO. Representative because the mood remains - exuding Trip Hop with simmering pianos, reflective female vocals and that slight feel of a soundtrack to no movie. Representative because it is cautious, as any MOBY recording - filled with ambiguous drama, clear-cut spirituality and quasi-epic forays into his introspective mirages. In the end, you have the typical unpredictably eclectic MOBY recording - in a record with many similar offerings, yet not exactly a compilation of them.
Hope Is Gone shifts for PORTISHEAD staged drama. More generous and open-wide a sonic setting. MOBY exudes in cathedrals of synths and spirals of morning bells. There's a rift between the reflective lyrics and the over-the-top surroundings. Maybe it's about humility. It's a conservative move by an often quoted trendsetter. But it doesn't diminish the aesthetic pleasure of listening to this remarkable mood cycle.
Delving deeper in the recedes of ambiguity, Ghost Return is a brilliant reiteration of possibilities. Dripping percussion, humming synths, pianos that reverb ominously, it sounds like PINK FLOYD's soundtrack to More or Tangerine Dream in whimsical mode. Possibilities that have been stressed before. The pinpointing exercise in a quiet place - reflection amidst a pushing world. It lasts for barely 2,5 minutes but feels like it has always been there. I bet MOBY knows his Anthony Giddens by heart.
Slow Light is Trip-Hop lullaby mode, a shimmering piece of late-night belonging. With echoing lull synths MOBY builds a warm palette for his accessible seduction. Slow Light doesn't come from a single bulb. Encompassing percussion arrives for an artificial apex - organic music from digital sources. It reminds me of the effects, even not the sonority of, MASSIVE ATTACK.
Isolate is another instrumental - a nice piano piece. Tasteful alternation of offset beats and ebony clangs. It feels DEPECHE's Ultra remixed by PHOTEK. Repetitive or getting under your skin without hindsight, you decide. This kind of, hum, atmospheric things give you a lot of stuff to think about. MUTE's recording of the year, barring DEPECHE MODE's latest retro affair. These states I'm in. See ya.
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