The first time most people heard a Moby song, they probably had no idea who they were listening to. As the creator of "Play," the 10 million selling chill electronic-meets-delta-blues blockbuster that dominated every movie and commercial at the turn of the millennium, he became an unwitting icon for a new money model in a music business unwittingly being dragged into obscurity. What's more, the "selling out" revolution was being headed by an artist who spent most of his life as a vegan hardcore punk fan. It's a contradiction that isn't lost on the man known to his mother as Richard Melville Hall. Short, bald and soft-spoken, Moby is hardly the picture of pop stardom. Yet, in a genre dominated by pretty boy European DJs, it's Moby that most people know.
In fact, these days, he's downright obsessed with it. Sitting in the foyer of the Le Germaine Hotel in Toronto, a decade on from the media dominance of "Play," he goes on at length about his flirtation, obsession and ultimate denial of the spectre of fame and success.
"In the '90s I was baffled that I had a career at all and in the late '90s I barely had a career," he recalls of his minor, brief pre-"Play" progressive house music success in Europe. "When 'Play' was released I was essentially a has-been."
Sipping on his fourth coffee of the day, he continues, "It was really hard to get a record contract, it was really hard to get anyone to listen to 'Play' when it was first released. Then it became hugely successful. Then I had to ask myself, 'Well ok, I understood myself as a musician who struggled, now I have to understand myself as a musician who has success and that was baffling."
The result was several clumsy attempts to regain his place in the pop continuum.
"There are some musicians who are really good at being successful and I'm not one of them," he deadpans. "My background is experimental, obscure music and I was suddenly trying to reinvent myself as a pop star and it just didn't work."
"I found myself liking success way too much," he continues. "Wanting to put out records that would keep the success going along because I liked being invited to fancy parties and I liked dating movie stars and I liked the attention, but that desire to keep the success going was coming from an unhealthy place, a desperate place. Thinking somehow success would stave off the ravages of the human condition."
It's this internal struggle, its emotional scars that has brought Moby into the latest phase of his career: reflective and aloof. The man who claims he was once so obsessed with rock star excess that he had an assistant whose entire job was to make sure there was a party wherever he went is now releasing 'Destroyed,' a combo album/photo book devoted to the mundane sounds of late nights spent alone in hotels. Like the music he makes, Moby has become the epitome of post-pop calm.
"I started making more of an effort to be degenerate and happy and the more degenerate I became the less happy I was," he says without a hint of melancholy. "Realizing [success] didn't work was kind of emancipating. Five or six years ago I suddenly realized that: a) I'm not interested in the world of pop music and; b) I can't see a compelling reason to make huge artistic compromises to accommodate the marketplace. For a musician to exist in the pop market in a successful way you have to make huge sacrifices and I don't think it's worth it because music is precious and the marketplace is cheap.
"It's kind of like compromising a relationship with a beautiful woman to accommodate a crystal meth addicted stripper."
In turn, his music is the sound of a man at peace with his place in the world. Never urgent, it mostly serves as a study of the human condition without being preachy.
"The impetus behind this record became: 'How can fill my time in a healthy way in these empty hotel rooms?' I wanted the music and the book to be a product of these empty spaces."
Consequently, the record comes off as a study of humanity as seen through the eyes of a man obsessed with its follies. Not coincidentally, the theme of "broken" runs heavily through "Destroyed."
"Not to sound too much like a grad student but it's because everything is by definition broken," he self-affectingly claims. "Human beings are messy broken creatures from the minute that we're born; even the way we're born is a messy process. Every part of our lives is broken and to pretend that that's not the case is really weird."
Naturally, he relates this to his reality.
"Pop culture and media is all about presenting the most perfect, inhuman face as possible. Pop stars do everything in their power to pretend that they're some idealized version of humanity that is unsustainable and unrealistic. When they don't we're freaked out, but I like the brokenness,"
And, as in all things Moby, he ends with a summation that could perhaps sum up the idealized polemic philosophy that he has come to adopt.
"To look honestly at human frailty is the greatest source of strength anyone could ever have."
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