As this is our final AOTM for 2024, our shop manager, Iain, is stepping in for Jamie this month. Additionally, since this year marks Loud & Clear Edinburgh’s 25th anniversary, Iain has chosen an album from 1999.

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 “When I was making it, I didn’t think anyone was gonna listen to it.”

Quite a statement to make! Ah, the gift of hindsight – especially considering the album has since sold around 12 million copies. The question remains: what would prompt an acclaimed artist to make such a comment in an interview with the good old BBC?

The tale begins…

Moby recorded the album as what was intended to be a final hurrah – the fifth album in a career rooted in electronica and heavily influenced by the club scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s. He had deviated a little with the previous album ‘Animal Rights’, a temporary return to his post punk roots, which failed on so many levels to a point that he acknowledged that his recording career was over. He had become a lost soul looking for inspiration or simply a wider audience to get what he was producing. ‘Play’ was described as an album of tracks, some of which he really didn’t want to release, which would be his final foray into the world of recorded music. Not so much an instrument for success, more an epitaph for what may have been.

His life was simply not going in a direction where most people would want to be. He had lost his mother to cancer, been dropped by his record label, was suffering severe panic attacks, and drinking heavily – where do you turn to when no one wants to listen to your tunes? The concept of ‘Play’ could have taken a dark and morbid turn, let’s face it, that would be no surprise. Contrary to that thought process, it turned out to be a wondrous and joyful set of tracks, earning universal acclaim.

The mechanics of the album were partly the key to its success. How many people actually think about the way an album is laid down? Not many, I’d guess. We just adopt the listening position and boogie to the flavour whilst nodding in appreciation to the outpouring. We add our critique in a well- intentioned fashion: good, bad or indifferent, and catalogue the albums in whichever way the individual prescribes. Testament really (How’s that Mr Tasker) to the disposable nature of some of the media which we get fed daily. Moby knew that to give Play any chance of being heard, he needed to carefully sequence the tracks to encourage listeners to experience the album from start to finish.

Given that lack of confidence in himself, and the non existence of any worthy input from the industry – what’s an artist to do? The vision was for a vocal lead album but he wasn’t a singer. It should be a glossy production to try and at least compete with what was popular at the time, at least to get a little airplay. The answer: sample the vocals from CDs which had been gifted, and add music assembled in his bedroom studio using second hand equipment. Not looking too rosy really.

Moby started to lay down the tracks in ’97 with the album hitting the music stores in May ’99 to, what is fair to say, a strong commercial underperformance on both sides of the Atlantic. However, Richard Branson’s V2 label had shown interest in promoting the album where others had shown no interest. Even with that backing, it lolled around in the lower reaches of the charts for some time, destined to be another disappointment in his canon of works. Enter the out-of-the-box thinking. If the album won’t sell, then can you place aspects of it within the wider media to try and gain some traction?

As an example of what can be achieved with that line of thinking let’s look at a track, probably the best known track on the album, ‘Porcelain’. Incidentally, the only track where the main vocal is by Moby himself. Inspired placement of the track in the Danny Boyle film ‘The Beach’ (featuring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tilda Swinton) got the music to the masses in a way that the original release of the album had failed to do. Moby said of the track “When I first recorded it, I didn’t think it was very good…….This was one of many songs that I didn’t want to put on the album. I recorded it, I mixed it, it didn’t really have a chorus, and I was going to leave it off the album.” How wrong can you be when struggling with what you want, need to achieve? The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, hands up everyone who doesn’t know the album…..Well you’re all a bunch of liars! It contains 18 carefully crafted tracks choreographed into one beautiful whole and has one very important distinction which lifts it above the also-rans. Every track has been sampled and used in either film soundtracks, television programmes or product advertisements. Yup, every single track is in our collective consciousness, either directly or subliminally. The game now is to listen to the album and work out what went where. Go on, dig out your copy- or if you never actually owned one, treat yourself to it now.

That fifth album, that last hurrah, now has a succession of glorious works which followed, 11 or so albums. On its week of release, it sold 6,000 copies worldwide, a year later it was selling 150,000 copies per week. Moby has been Grammy nominated six times and headlined Glastonbury in 2003. Boom! Way to go, Moby.

Iain, December 2024