An emblematic figure of danceable electro from the 2000s, Moby is back with “Always Centered at Night”, released on June 14. A twenty-second album where the New York artist welcomes several voices on electro-pop pieces that are more accessible than his last experiments.
After some more radical ambient or inaudible experiments, Moby returns to his more accessible electro-pop fundamentals. Released on June 14, his twenty-second album called “Always Centered at Night” features thirteen tracks which feature numerous guest voices, as in his beginnings when the New Yorker built his songs around sampled voices.
Accustomed over the last thirty years to collaborations, Moby has worked on stage or in the studio with the biggest international and French stars, from David Bowie to Freddie Mercury via Gregory Porter, Mark Lanegan, Mylène Farmer, Jean-Michel Jarre and Nicola Sirkis .
This new album this time contains collaborations in particular with Lady Blackbird, American soul singer nicknamed the “Grace Jones of jazz” for “Dark Days”, as well as with lesser known artists but with unique and captivating voices like Danaë, Raquel Rodriguez or India Carney.
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Committed voices and melancholy
Voices are very often engaged, as recalled in the song “Where Is Your Pride” by Benjamin Zephaniah, a British poet, musician and actor who died last December. He was committed, like Moby, to the animal cause and civil rights and against institutions, the system, the monarchy, colonization.
In this poem declaimed to jungle rhythms, it is the 1990s that resurface. The album also revisits this electronic period, adding more complexity to the structures and arrangements, leaning in places towards house with, among others, the American singer Raquel Rodriguez.
The use of certain sounds, such as a small flute, also pushes Moby’s repertoire towards ambient and easy listening while the spirit is closer to trip-hop with the Sudanese singer based in the Netherlands Gaidaa ( “Transit”). Alongside JP Bimeni, soul singer, r’n’b, descendant of the royal family of Burundi who found refuge in Wales after escaping three assassination attempts, it is a more committed side that Moby explores.
No dance hits in the end for “Always Centered at Night”, but a consistency of calm and melancholic titles.
Radio subject: Yves Zahno
Web adaptation: olhor
Moby, “Always Centered at Night” (Because Music). Published on June 14, 2024.
In concert at La Vaudoise Arena, Lausanne, September 25, 2024.
