After leaving his small home studio, Moby went to East-West Studios in LA, recording in Studio 3 where Brian Wilson famously made “Pet Sounds.” After tracking piano and guitar and percussion and drums and chamber orchestra in LA, Moby decided it was time to move the production to Hungary to record with the Budapest Art Orchestra. The recording of “Reprise” started small, as his records often do, with Moby alone in his studio deciding which songs to revisit, and then coming up with basic orchestral arrangements. After all, he’d grown up listening to and studying classical music before playing in punk bands and making his own electronic music. A rep from the label Deutsche Grammophon approached Moby backstage with the idea of making an orchestral album, and he leapt at the idea.
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I said, 'That's for real artists!'” The booker disagreed, and in October 2018, Moby made his orchestral debut with a full gospel choir, Gustavo Dudamel conducting, and even Mayor Eric Garcetti on piano. “She asked me if I'd ever be interested in performing an orchestral set with the LA Philharmonic, and I thought she was kidding. “There was an unadorned vulnerability,” he says of these small, humble sets, “and that emotional directness really appealed to me, especially contrasted to the manufactured bombast of a traditional big concert.”Īfter attending a Bryan Ferry concert in Los Angeles, Moby started talking with the booker for the LA Philharmonic. He started to do stripped-down acoustic shows in people's backyards or small theatres. At the time, Moby had finally accepted that he hated the big machine of major global touring. The idea for revisiting and re-imagining songs from his entire “career” came about seven years ago, he recalls. At best I'm lucky that every now and then I work on music and someone seems to like it.” I can easily name around 500 musicians and songwriters who I think are so much better than I am. “And, oddly, I don't like to take myself or my career too seriously. “I know it sounds simplistic, but I just really love making things,” he says, disarmingly, on the phone from his Los Angeles studio in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite having one of the longest and most idiosyncratic careers in modern music, and after selling over 20 million albums, he actually rejects the notion of even having a career at all. But through it all, Moby has never stopped creating art from a place of curiosity, frustration, joy, and exploration. Three decades into his career, “Reprise” is less of a Greatest Hits record and more of a chance to reflect on the way in which art can adapt over time to different settings and contexts.ģ0 years ago, Moby was an underground New York City DJ when he rose from obscurity with an electronic dance track called “Go.” His path from then until now has been tortuous and unconventional, full of dizzying peaks and dark night-of-the-soul troughs. Some of the new versions are sparser, slower and more vulnerable, while others exploit the bombastic potential an orchestra can offer. Together with Hungary’s Budapest Art Orchestra, he has re-envisioned some of his most recognizable rave classics and anthems.