Inteview with Moby

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- MOBY -the GOODBYE interview
by Hollywood

It's been a long time. I can remember back to an Impact demo, around 1989,
with some state-of-the-art  bobs, and an atmospheric, sussed soundtrack 
by a certain French musician. I can certainly remember the two TP-winning 
modules, the tunes in "Arte", the enduring fame he's made for himself. 
But, with the death of Sanity, things are looking bad. When I contacted 
Moby to do this interview he said it would be his 'farewell to the scene'.
 
Will Moby become 'the ghost at number one' in the charts? Is this 
really goodbye, or just au revoir? Who better to ask than the guy 
himself.

Our readers may not know your current job position: tell them what you're
up to and what exactly you've been working on.

Besides demo making, I've been composing game musics since quite a few 
years now. I started to work as a freelance musician for some french game 
developpers such as Coktel Vision and Lankhor around 1990. Then, I worked 
for Atreid Concept regularly. And in September 1994, I became in-house
audio technician when Atreid became a part of the Mindscape organisation.
The highlights of my career :) at Mindscape are the 380 Sound effects for 
Warriors (a fighting game for PC) and the musics for a car racing game 
called Al Unser Jr Arcade Racing (!), running on Power Macintosh and blowing
protracker modules through the speaker :). (the PC Windows version only
blows Soundblaster crap...) And last month, I started to work on a huge 
CDRom adventure game for which I'll have to compose about 30 themes, to 
create 400-500 sound effects and to manage some hours of speech recording 
in a studio. (I think I'll spend about 6 months on this project !)

Is this really goodbye to the Amiga scene from Moby?

Well, I'm afraid yes. You may already have noticed that I didn't release 
anything since Arte. This is mostly due to lack of time, and more recently
lack of motivation. I compose music, I sample and I mix all day long at
work, and I simply don't feel like protracking when I come back home... 
(it must sound familiar to my colleague Mark Knight :) Actually, I think 
I slowly started to quit more than one year ago, but I never had the 
chance to say "good bye" to all the people who made these past years in 
the scene so fuckin' great ! Of course, I'll keep an eye on the scene, 
thanks to my modem :). I still love watching good demos ! And there have
been a bunch of cool ones lately...
Besides, my girlfriend keeps on telling me that I won't resist and that I
will be back in the scene in a few months. I seriously doubt it will ever
happen, but you never know... :)

I know you've been working with Nooon on the PC-scene, along with Ra,
to produce two of the best PC demos ever. Are you going to continue
doing that?

Actually, I only worked on our first demo. I thought I could regain 
motivation by making a PC demo soundtrack, but it was even more boring. 
Trackers on PC are no trackers. Moreover, I don't have any PC at home, and 
I don't want any. But when Ra asked for a tune for the Assembly 95 demo, I 
first said yes, but I didn't manage to complete a good tune in time. So I 
told him my will to stop. I don't think I'll release any other tune on a 
PC demo.

Which of your Amiga soundtracks are you most proud of?

I think "Livin' Insanity" (first tune from Arte) is my favorite. I would put
"Happy Paskamies" in second place. I made this one for Dr Skull and Tsunami's
Psychedelic demo, but it seems they didn't like it. "Mobyle" (3rd module in
Arte) is not that bad too. And I like very much "Progressive Funk" which was 
my first hit!

You have, in the past, come under some fire from certain Finnish musicians
over the fact they think you're not as original or innovative as a lot
of people think: sampling from obscure 70s records was an
accusation, I believe. What do you say to that?

I never heard of that sampling accusation, but anyway, I don't care about 
that kind of gossips. I've never claimed to be original nor innovative. I've
done my job the most honestly I could. I've never stolen anything. If those 
Finnish people you're talking about said such things about me, it must be
because they don't know me at all. I've never composed anything for fame.
I'm surely not the best musician around (Dizzy is :), but nobody can doubt 
I'm honest. By the way, Dizzy rules, man (and shut your mouth Rokdazone). 
Forget everybody else. Heatbeat fooled everybody by doing things which seem
to be original, but which are just unlistenable jokes. But he made enough 
masterpieces to be excused.

Was being in Sanity as fun as watching the demos made by them?

Not really. The biggest problem was the distance between us. A chance Ra 
lives in France. I think without Ra, I would have not stayed so long in Sanity.
But I didn't care too much about the lack of communication, as I was already 
a bit out of the scene. All I could say, is that Ra and I are very proud to
have been members of Sanity, and even more proud to have brought "Arte" to
the scene.

Has anyone ever confused you with the 'real' (American vegan 
reformed-techno-nutter) Moby?

Oh yes... I've been asked "Are you the same Moby as the one who releases
techno CDs ?" at least a thousand times. IT'S NOT ME! I SWEAR!


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Why have you never released a music-disc?

I released some when I was in Impact and in Alcatraz :). But I hate music 
disks. Who wants to hang out 30-40 minutes in front of his amiga to listen 
to some modules while reading stupid scrolltexts ? I mean, who except me ?
It requires too much time and emotion ;)

What was the last Amiga tune you listened to?

Surely a Dizzy tune. "Walk'n Titanize" is playing while I'm typing.

What did you do with the prize money from the two Party music-competitions
you won?

I bought myself a Porsche 911, and a villa near the beach. I also bought a 
soccer team. Incidentally, I also happened to pay the travel back home and my
rent.

Do you have any unreleased MODs? If so, what will you do with them?

I may have 3 or 4 unreleased tunes (including that "happy paskamies" tune
for Virtual Dreams, which is actually the very last tune I made with my 
amiga, in july 1994). I don't think I'll release them, or maybe through 
aminet one day...

I know you're a massive fan of Danny Elfman ("Batman" movie composer and
maker of "The Simpsons" title-tune.) What are your aims? Do you
want to emulate him and get into movie-composing, or do you enjoy
composing for games?

I'm not quite ready for movie-composing :). I'm just training, as at 
Mindscape we are often making video presentations of our games. I did some
"movie-like" musics for the presentations of the CDRom adventure game I 
talked about. It's very interesting to work on that because every single
bit of the music has to be synchronized with the different sequences. I love
doing that but it's not always that easy. However, my first aim right now is
to release a CD for the scene.

Andy Warhol said "everyone is famous for 15 minutes". How much of
your 15 minutes have you used up?

Tough one ! I don't know. I don't think I've used much of the 15 minutes,
because being famous in the scene is not being really famous. You know, 
I've been to a Steve Vai concert 2 years ago, and after the show, I waited 
with some friend to chat with Steve. When he finally came out, you should 
have seen the famous Moby unable to say anything to the famous Steve Vai. 
I was so impressed... Actually, being famous is not my aim. Being rich 
would be enough ;)

Have you ever modelled for any of Ra's pictures?

Yes, I am the sexy girl who appears in the middle of Arte!

Have you anything to declare?

Well, thanks to you Simon for this interview... Hello to all my friends,
to all those who supported me, to Heatbeat for being the biggest directory
on my hard disk, to #amigascne and #trax people, to Skimpy ;), to Ninja Force
GS, and to all the people I've known and loved.