Moby

A Moby "best of" is a tricky beast. Comfortable both as a club god or thrash metal rocker, he's tough to group into one collection. Furthermore, the extreme overexposure of Play means that many of these selections need never be heard again. That said, Moby has made some all-time classics, especially "Go" and "South Side." If you're one of the eight people left on the planet yet to hear Play, then this will be a revelation; others will appreciate the new re-mixes of familiar work.

The Domed One's finest tunes, from techno to sampled gospel hollers Seven years later,
Moby has constructed an album as seductively sequenced and in-your-face melodic as
Play, and give him credit -- he recycled only five Play tracks doing it. Give him less credit
for weighting a sixteen-song best-of so heavily toward his present label. Moby, a man who
knows the permissions game, clearly decided that pulling Nineties keepers off hi... More >

Seven years later, Moby has constructed an album as seductively sequenced and in-your-face melodic as Play, and give him credit--he recycled only five Play tracks doing it. Give him less credit for weighting a 16-song best-of so heavily toward his present label. Moby, a man who know the permissions game, clearly decided that pulling Nineties keepers off his Elektra and Instinct albums wasn't worth the tariff, at least not to him--Everything Is Wrong's "God Moving on the Face of the Waters" is his only concession. He compensates with an intense, toasted-up live "Feeling So Real" and a fleshed-out remake of his 1991 classic "Go." Both these tracks typify an album that doesn't depend exclusively on borrowed black people as human signifiers, at once more rock and more techno than Play. And you needn't be a dance geek to play the bonus disc of fave remixes in your living room. (Grade - ****)