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 | Moby:Ambient (Instinct - 1993) The title doesn't mince words; of course, with long-reigning techno king, Moby at the controls, you can be sure this particular CD packs plenty of rhythm. It's ambient techno, isn't it? Or small pieces of it anyway... |
| The liner notes say it's "a testment that techno can be warm, thoughtful and from the heart"... Well, it all seems a bit detached to me, but I guess it's warm enough. And thoughtful ? Meditative, perhaps... contemplative maybe in a relaxed way, but not challenging enough to truly be called "thoughtful".
And what about from the heart ? Many of the pieces are just snippets of music... are they unfinished, half-baked works, or are they just scraps swept up from the mixing room floor and packaged as a CD? Either way, it seems a bit heartless to me. It's adept enough, computerized music which seems somewhat rote, though skillfully executed. It's not bad, but it falls short of better things it could have been. Things start out promisingly enough with My Beautiful Blue Sky and its jungly beats, sweeping synth and some interesting changes during its course. Heaven is a trance-inducing (by repetition) little number. It clocks in at over 8 minutes, making it the longest track. Tongues patters on with a little rat-a-tat drumbeat. Piano and synth blend nicely in the beautifully flowing J Breas, which is one of those short tracks, 2:47 in length. Myopia is mostly a burbling rhythm that occasionally is overlaid by other staccato notes. A groovy little keyboard sets the pace along with a simple beat in House of Blue Leaves. This tune struck me as somehow 70's-ish. I believe there was great potential in Bad Days, which is a bit distorted and has a pulsing drone at its heart. Unfortunately it clocks in at only a bit over 2 minutes, not getting the chance to develop further. Piano and String gets even less time. And Sound is barely over 1 minute in length. Just scraps from Moby's techno table. Dog is a peppy, yet sterile, little number. A beat, some keyboards and robotic handclaps... yeah, that's pretty much it. A much more quiet piece is 80, yet another very short track, which doesn't feature a beat. |
| No Thumbs. This is one of those releases that I hoped to like better. It works just fine when it's noodling away in the background, as electronic wallpaper. But upon scrutiny, it breaks down, particularly when considering it comes from such a "big name" as Moby. Regardless of the performer, the music could have been more inventive, less repetitive, and ideally... thoughtful and from the heart, even. |  |
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