Sometimes a night out is more than a night out, it’s the experience that changes your life.
That’s the inspiration behind Moby’s fantastic upcoming album Last Night.
“I first started going out to nightclubs in New York in 1980,” he explains in calm, measured tones.
“I was 14, 15 at the time and it was such an amazing time, because you had this thriving New York nightlife and no-one in the rest of the world paid attention to it.
“Actually I mean the whole 80s were like that, because it seemed like after the 70s there was this disco backlash, where no-one in the rest of the world wanted to know about dance music, but dance music here was thriving and it was racially mixed. You know, you’d go out and it’d be white and it’s be black and it’s be Latino, it’d be Asian and half the people would be straight, half the people would be gay.
“I was really privileged to have been around then. I have to say I get kind of wistful and a little bit melancholy when I think about it, because it was really special.”
A lot of parallels get drawn between Liverpool and New York’s music scenes. Have you sampled any of Liverpool’s nightlife?
“Well, there’s a bit of a story there,” he laughs. “I’d heard about this really great club in Liverpool called Cream. I brought my friends from home and we went for a big night.
“It was a Friday night and they took one look at my friends and I and wouldn’t let us in. They didn’t want five skinny, scruffy guys from New York in there.
“Well, then I made the mistake of trying to be reasonable. I should have known you should never argue with a door man.
“Needless to say we didn’t get in.
“But the worst thing was that I could hear they were playing one of my records inside. I tried to tell the door man that, but it was cutting no ice and we walked back to our hotel.
“As we left, I could see girls walking in in tiny tops and skirts. It was the middle of winter, but these girls were outside in hardly anything. We must be real sissies in New York.
“It made me feel all paternal. I wanted to give them all a jumper, tell them to wrap up warm.”
Why did you choose night out as an inspiration for the album?
“I have a strange musical background, because I’ve played a lot of different types of music, so when I’m making a record, one of the bigger questions is what type of record do I want to make? Do I want to make a punk rock record? Do I want to make a strange electronic record? Do I want to mark a more dance-oriented record? And the last couple of records that I’ve made had, at least from my perspective, a slightly subdued quality to them and I wanted to make something… make an album that was maybe just like a little more playful, a little more reflective of my life as it actually is. You know, it was supposed to be an album about having a long, interesting, compelling night out with your friends.”
Was it a deliberate choice to make a less serious album?
“Yeah, I had a long didactic period in my life, you know. When I was 15 years old I was a militant punk rocker and then I became a militant dance music person. I was a militant vegan and I was a militant Christian and at some point I sort of stepped back and I realised the only thing that these phases had in common was their militancy and the thing I’ve realised about militancy is it can be fun and it can be seductive, but it’s not very productive, you know and being militantly committed to a cause doesn’t necessarily make you a good advocate for that cause and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making the world a better place.
“The last six years in the United States and the world has been a time of fundamentalism and militancy and the more I see other people engaged in militancy, whether it’s right-wing militancy, left-wing militancy, Islamic militancy, it just makes me want to have nothing to do with fundamentalism and militancy at all.
“So maybe that’s sort of the impetus behind the record, saying like everybody else in the world is so militantly committed to their causes and all these militants are actually ruining the world. Why not just make a fun dance record for your friends?”
Last night is out on May 12, but can be previewed now in the form of a free DJ mix, downloadable in its entirety at www.RCRDLBL.com.