full interview_moby_1.mp3
Moby [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Moby and I'm, I guess I do a lot of odd, disparate things, but I'm mainly known as a musician.
Speaker 2 [00:00:10] Just as a sort of level set to this wide-reaching conversation, what drew you to music as opposed to any other art?
Moby [00:00:18] But when I was growing up, everyone in my family did some sort of odd type of creative expression. My mother was a painter and also a pianist. My uncle was a photographer and played recorder. Both my aunts were writers. My other uncle was sculptor. My great-grandmother taught classical composition. My grandmother was a classical musician who was also a watercolor painter. So everyone did something. And I gravitated towards music for a couple of reasons. One is I fell in love with music. I mean, I comprehensively completely fell in love with Music when I was about four years old. So I fell In love with the music. Music was exciting. But also everyone else in my family, they were really good at visual arts. And so I dabbled in photography, painting, drawing, but they were all so good. It was kind of intimidating. And so I think one of the reasons I also picked music was because no one in my family, even though they played instruments, they weren't professionals. And so it wasn't as daunting.
Speaker 2 [00:01:29] And at some point, you sort of honed in, you kind of have a long thread of music genres that we'll talk about in a second, but you obviously arrived at electronic music, and on the topic of art and technology, I'm curious what it is about electronic music that drew you to that specific.
Moby [00:01:47] Well, I started out in the late seventies playing classical guitar. Uh, and I studied music theory and I had a guitar teacher who also loved jazz fusion, so I was 12 years old playing jazz fusion and classical guitar, and then I heard the clash on the radio. I heard punk rock for the first time and I was like, Oh, I want to do that. And so I broke my guitar teacher's heart because he wanted me to be a virtual, so classical guitarist or jazz fusion guitarist. And instead I wanted to go play Sex Bistro songs. So I started a band with some friends and we started hanging out in New York. And this was the late seventies, early eighties. And the music scene in New york then was so eclectic. So you would go to clubs like CBGB, Dance of Teria, A7, and you would hear different types of music. You know, like you'd go to Dance of teria to see a punk rock band, but then you'd hear hip hop and you'd here electronic music. And that was my... Really my exposure to electronic music was being in New York, but also I had grown up loving science fiction. And electronic music sounded like the future. So I always loved punk rock, but sonically I fell in love with electronic music because you could also do more with it. Not to malign guitars or drums, but guitars almost always sound like guitars, drums almost always sounds like drums, electronic music could sound like anything.
Speaker 2 [00:03:16] And that was, you know, did you just dive in knowing that to be true or were you learning technology at the time and sort of understanding it on a deeper level?
Moby [00:03:25] Well, when I first started trying to make electronic music, the technology was so ridiculously expensive that my options were pretty limited. I had a drum machine called a Mattel Simsonics that was made by Mattel, the toy company. And I had Corg synthesizer that I bought for $20 at a garage sale. That was my electronic setup. So technologically, it was... Very rudimentary, but to me it was so exciting because I was making electronic music, even if it was a $50 drum machine and $20 synthesizer.
Speaker 2 [00:04:04] You know, we've talked to a lot of artists, and one of the, you know, A-B of creative approaches is, do you love a blank slate where all options are available, or do you like to put boundaries around the experience? It sounds like you might be in the first camp because you wanted that expansive palette to work with. Is that fair to say?
Moby [00:04:25] I mean, in terms of working within, like, an expansive palette or, you know, an endless tabula rasa canvas, or having some sort of creative guardrails, both can be wonderful. You know, restrictions can be liberating and sometimes liberation can be restrictive. So it's really, it's hard for me to generalize too much. You know sometimes I love having that tabula rasa, just sitting down being like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to start playing around and see what happens. Other times, it's nice to start with something, to start acoustic guitar, to start with a voice, to starts with drums and sort of like work within that structure.
Speaker 2 [00:05:09] So do you ever have, you know, you have an artistic idea, a musical idea, and maybe it's a guitar chord or maybe it is a sample or something. Do you ever start the other way where you get a new piece of technology that you don't have the song yet, but you want that to be a part of it? Does technology lead art ever?
Moby [00:05:31] I mean the relationship, and forgive me for really stating the obvious, but like the history of music is the history of technology. The only music that doesn't involve external devices is singing. And I'm not a great singer, so I'm very reliant upon devices, but those devices historically could have been a harpsichord, it could be a flute, it can be a chamber orchestra, It can be a piano. In my case, and especially now in the 21st century, there's no limit to what those sonic elements can be. It can be any instrument that can be played can be used in a composition. And of course, every instrument has its own, I was gonna like, its own personality, its own timbre-driven character. And sometimes that can be really exciting. You know, like, and also that's an example of working within those restrictions. You know like for example, if I sit down to play harpsichord, you can only make a harpsi-chord sound like a harpichord. Like you'd be really frustrated trying to make a Harpsichords sound like a cello. So when, when you sit down to play harpsichord or sit down to play piano, like you're working within the wonderful restrictions of that technology.
Speaker 2 [00:07:00] And you mentioned the human voice. I'm wondering, sort of, that's a great example of this. Are there any instruments, or the voice included, that technology will never really replicate for you?
Moby [00:07:16] It's a good question. Are there, I mean, cause when I say technology, I'm including acoustic instruments, you know, a drum is technological, you know? A flute, a recorder, an oboe, these are all, they're technology. For me, technology is anything that's not singing. And I, but I do think that especially, and I know I'm stating the obvious, like with the burgeoning strength and power of AI, It's, um, you know, the voice in particular, like, I believe that AI is going to become almost just as good at vocalizing as humans, which it is what it is, like some people are bothered by that. My perspective is human history is one, I was going to say technological advancement, but I don't know if it's advancement, it's just human history is 1 of technological change. And every... Technological change, by definition, involves disruption, you know, that was true with, you know a lot of people ran vaudeville theaters when silent film was invented, you know. A lot of newscasters had great jobs at local news stations, a lot of DJs at local radio, a a lot people have lost their jobs because they've been disrupted by technology. So sometimes it's very sad, sometimes it is very liberating. But that's just the nature of technology. People use it almost without considering whether or not it's going to disrupt. Even stem cell research, even cloning, the fact that they're trying to keep the genie in the bottle on these things, it's a fool's errand. You can't keep the Genie in a bottle, even if the Geni is potentially kind of destructive.
Speaker 2 [00:09:16] I mean, I'm curious if you find the value, you know, you work with so many samples historically and you find something that spurs the rest of the song where if you were working with, let's say AI advanced to the point where you could really perfectly mimic a voice, you might lose that because it wouldn't have, there would be nothing there to spur you, it would all have to come from you. So are you maybe losing that value of being surprised by something you discovered?
Moby [00:09:45] Uh, to be honest with you, I have not worked with AI yet. Um, I know that it's becoming more and more viable. I'm kind of curious to play around with it, but I, I've never, I never used AI, so I don't have a strong opinion on it. Dedicated my life to music almost unknowingly at a really early age, like when I was around six or seven years old. I, it never dawned on me that I would have a job as a musician. I just wanted to spend my life playing music, talking about music, writing about music listening about listening to music, thinking about music. Being in communities of musicians and people who are interested in music. I just, that was what I wanted my life. And it led me to, you know, In the late 80s, I was living in an abandoned factory in the middle of a crack neighborhood. I had no running water, I had bathroom. I was making about $2,000 a year. So I was very, very broke, but I was working on music and I was really happy. And around that time, I met this guy named Eddie, who had a giant mohawk and he played in a sort of industrial metal band called Chop Shop. And we became very good friends. Time pass. Eddie lost the Mohawk and became a yoga teacher, as people do. And we just stayed friends. And I guess it was in around 2002, his dad became the chairman of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, an organization started by Oliver Sacks. And so Eddie and I went up to the Bronx where the Institute for Music and Neurologic Functions had their headquarters and met with the people. You know, I'll met with dr. Saks met dr. Tumano who runs the organization now and met a bunch of the clients explain to me that music is a profound healing modality, like an unbelievably like legitimate profound healing modality that, you know, they were using advanced technology like fMRIs, PET scans to show that music actually like decreases stress hormones, it promotes neurogenesis, it strengthens the immune system, it promotes healing in incredibly viable, legitimate ways. Up until that point, I always thought music was fun. I loved it, it was my job, I dedicated my life to it, but I thought music, it's fun, it is wonderful, it was emotional, but it was only after meeting Dr. Sacks, meeting Dr Tumano, going to the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function that I realized that music had so much more power to it. You know, that music was this profound healing modality. And it's funny because when you tell people that, they don't believe you. You know, we still live in this world. And I could be really esoteric and go back to this, I think he was a 14th century monk named Joachim de Fiore who talked about the three ages of humans and how ultimately we would no longer need to have third-party clerical support for things like healing. You know, or education. Granted, I'm all in favor of doctors and teachers, but there is this idea that we still sort of hold on to, that unless healing is monetized, unless it's institutional, unless it is sanctioned by the authorities, people don't take it seriously. And so it was hard for me to reconcile the fact that music, which is essentially free, is as profound, if not more of a profound healing modality, than a lot of sort of like for-profit healing modalities.
Speaker 2 [00:13:48] Do you think if somebody came to you before you'd gone to IMNF and learned everything you did, if somebody told you this before then, you would be open to receiving that, that you'd believe that music can heal you?
Moby [00:14:01] I mean, I was a philosophy major at school, I'm a college dropout, I am certainly not a scientist, so if before meeting Oliver Sacks, before meeting Dr. Tomeno, if someone had told me that music was a healing modality, I probably would have, I don't want to get in trouble, but I would have put it in the same category as like Reiki, or other things that might make people feel good, you know, aromatherapy, crystals, It's like, nice thing. Not maligning them, but like hard to say that they are, you can, they have empirical support to warrant them being considered real healing modalities. And what's so great about what Dr. You know, Dr. Sacks, Dr. Camino did is they've proven it, you know, instead of it being anecdotal, like they're not just saying, Hey, music makes you happy. Therefore it's a healing modality or music healed me. They're saying, here's the data, you. Know here's. The FMRI data, you know here's, the blood work data. Showing that music is a healing modality.
Speaker 2 [00:15:03] Why do you think it is so hard to believe, especially when music is so universal and gives people such choice?
Moby [00:15:14] Still this, we're all skeptical of something that's not officially sanctioned. We're skeptical of things that don't have giant institutions behind them. You know, we're skeptical of spirituality that is not supported by traditions that are thousands of years old, we are skeptical of healing that might be available. Rather than going, I'm not again, I'm, not maligning churches or pharmaceutical companies, but there's obviously a lot of phenomenal spirituality that doesn't involve going into a church, and a lot of healing that doesn't involve. Buying drugs from pharmaceutical companies. I don't know, we're still like, we, for some reason, something in the human makeup, we still need things to be officially sanctioned. Like I had this conversation in DC recently, and I realized with the wrong group of people to have this conversation, I was with some senators and members of the House, and I said, why do we still have elected representatives? Like it made sense in the 18th and 19th century, Like before telephones, before the internet, when you had like an agrarian society where people had to like be on the farm so they elected representatives because that was the only way you could have representative democracy. I was like, but now why not just have direct democracy? I was, like, why do we still have these institutions that are hundreds of years old that clearly are not working? Didn't go over too well with, but because there's this, In philosophy, there is... A very simple fallacy called the is-ought fallacy, that people will say because something is, it ought to continue to be. Because something has been, it should been, should, should be. You know, like, people have used it to justify all sorts of terrible things. Like, for the longest time, people are like, well, same-sex couples couldn't get married, therefore they shouldn't get marry. Women haven't been allowed to vote, therefore they should be allowed to voted. Like, clearly, it's ridiculous, logic. It's very fallacious. But we still hold on to it with a lot of different things. Like, clearly we've always gone to churches for spiritualities, like, but do we still need to? Clearly we've all always gone to pharmaceutical companies for healing. Do we still to? Or is there some sort of hybridized version of the two? Long, my sadly long-winded way of saying... People are very distrustful of healing that is, that you don't pay for. You know, I mean, how many times have, I'm sure that you or someone watching has been like, oh, my friend said this, but they're just my friends, so I won't believe them, but that guy on the internet said this or he's on the Internet, so clearly I'm gonna give that so much more credence and pay so much attention to it. It's like, for some reason, we don't, we tend to not trust. Our own experience. We tend to not trust what's right in front of us.
Speaker 2 [00:18:29] Finally gave me a name that the philosophy of always believe because we've always done it is like my least favorite
Moby [00:18:35] That is odd fallacy and it falls apart with the littlest bit of scrutiny, but we still hold on to it
Speaker 2 [00:18:42] So you made an album in 2020 with Ambient Music. And this came obviously after you'd met with I.N.F. And learned all about this. I'm curious how you approached that. It had three very specific rules, which I'm hoping you can state for us. And I can remind you of that if you want, but how did you approach this album and why did you?
Moby [00:19:11] I was first exposed to ambient music, um, working in a record store in the eighties, looking at Brian Eno records. Uh, and one of the first records I ever bought was Heroes by David Bowie. Inside two of Heroes is ambient music that he made with Eno. Uh, And I guess it's at the first or one of Eno specific ambient albums, like Ambient One or Ambient Four talks about how Eno was exposed to Ambient Music. I just loved that idea. Music that almost lives to not be paid attention to. You know, music that helps to define the space, it informs your perspective of space, but it's not demanding your attention. And so even though in the course of my life I've played punk rock, I've made classical music, I've make pop music, I made dance music, I've done all these weird different types of genres, but ambient music is something that I make for myself. You know? To meditate, to sleep. To do yoga, to be less anxious. So a lot of the ambient music I've made, because I've now released, I guess, like five or six ambient albums. It's music that I make where I'm the test subject. Like, does it calm me down? You know, does that make me less anxious? And if the answer is yes, then I can release it.
Speaker 2 [00:20:34] And you had these goals of nothing written beforehand, nothing at all. Well, that's.
Moby [00:20:37] Well, that's that specific. That was that album. Yeah.
Speaker 2 [00:20:42] What was the idea there? Was that based on a scientific idea or was that just a challenge to yourself?
Moby [00:20:50] Uh, it's, there is this, cause in addition to being a musician, I'm also a music producer, you know, and there's a pretty big distinction between the two. There are a lot of musicians who are not producers, you know, And they're great musicians. A lot of vocalists who are not producers and they're great vocalists. I've sort of had to become both. So I've produced myself. I've remixed and produced everybody from David Bowie, to Michael Jackson, to Britney Spears, to Freddie Mercury, to Daft Punk, to the Beastie Boys. And so when I'm working on music, I have a lot of different hats. And a huge part of music production is figuring out how to avoid the pursuit of perfection. As strange as that might sound, a lot of musicians want to be perceived as perfect. But none of us listen to music in the pursuit of perfection. You know, we want emotion, we wanna vulnerability, we want an expression of beauty and the human condition. The problem is, a lot of singers don't wanna do that because that involves being vulnerable. And musicians don't want to be vulnerable. So in working with other people, I've had to learn tricks, how to get them to be vulnerability. And in working myself, I sort of sometimes had to do the same thing. Like. There's always that inclination to go back and want to perfect something, to create technical perfection. But sometimes technical perfection is actually, it, it diminishes the music. And so when I made that live ambient record during the pandemic, I gave myself the rule of like, oh, nothing is written beforehand and I only get to record it once. And because I wanted there to be that, I don't know, that the vulnerability, the intimacy, the immediacy that comes with spontaneity, you know? Because there is, again, there's always that temptation to want to go back and fix it. But like, not to seem too esoteric, but maybe it's not esoterical, it's like, there is also, we all want to fix the human condition. History's not really. Doesn't look too favorably on people who've gone and tried to fix the human condition, like accepting the human condition and working within vulnerability and human frailty is not just a better approach to being alive but it's also a better process to making art and music.
Speaker 2 [00:23:28] Do you imagine that there's some distinction between listening to this music and being calmed or healed in some way by it and playing it? Is there a difference there for you? Do you feel like there's a healing aspect to making it?
Moby [00:23:44] One thing I learned, a couple of things I learned with, from Dr. Sachs and Dr. Tomeno at the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function. One is the way in which people respond to music is subjective. You know, there's this idea that some music is more healing than others. It's like, you know, it's, it subjective. If you grew up in Thailand, there is a chance that you would find gamelan music to be very healing. I didn't grow up with gamelan music, and to me it sounds like Pots and Pans falling downstairs. I appreciate it, but I don't find it to be relaxing and healing. If you grew up listening to loud hip-hop, there's a good chance loud hip hop is going to be healing to you. I don't find it terribly healing, but I, you know, again, I appreciate it, but I don't want to listen to it in the pursuit of healing. But I've also learned the Institute is part of what the people at the Institute do.
Speaker 3 [00:24:43] Sorry, should we pause one second for that, sir? Yeah, I think we should. Sorry. Just one second. It's a little – let's go ahead. Okay, go ahead, thank you.
Moby [00:24:52] One thing I learned at the institute is... Part of healing comes from listening to music, but a big part of what they do is they get people to play music. Even people who don't know how to play music are still actively playing music. And I don't if listening and playing music are healing in the same way, but I find personally like listening to music can be such a wonderful experience, but playing music can be like healing and engaging in similar but slightly different ways.
Speaker 2 [00:25:28] You know, I know I watched the stream you did with Dr. Tomeo and Dr. Levitin and I know you are highly respectful of what they know and do, but I'm curious, your thought, we're always interested how an artist can contribute to a conversation for scientists and that it flows that way. How do you feel that a musician like yourself can aid in this or comment in a meaningful way to the conversation about music here?
Moby [00:25:56] For better or worse, I mean even though I'm a college dropout, you know, as a philosophy student dropped out of college, I'm obsessed with science. My news feed is all it's neuroscience, it's biology, it's environment, it is physics, and so I'm dilettante scientist. You know, I love reading about science and science theory. I think the two things I can bring to a conversation about science, one, my enthusiasm. And two, the fact that I'm obsessed with all science. You know, like, because obviously, like a lot of scientists, they have very siloed interests. You know astrophysicists tend to be experts at astrophysics, but if you ask them about something that's not related to astroph physics, there's a good chance they might not be interested or know about it. Kind of like, you know, let's let that pass.
Speaker 3 [00:26:53] That's a big one. Yep.
Moby [00:26:57] Kind of like, kind of like if you went to a gastroenterologist you wouldn't necessarily ask them about neuroscience. So, when I've had conversations with scientists, that's what I have. I have my enthusiasm and my general dilettante-ish awareness, which sometimes can involve a lot of synthesis. You know, because I'll be combining all sorts of different disciplines in my head. I'm not an expert. But it gives me a perspective that might, I don't know, that at least I find interesting.
Speaker 2 [00:27:34] I just want to ask a side note question about that is how do you feel about the kind of siloing of art and science in our culture because it's a very recent human invention.
Moby [00:27:47] The sort of the compartmentalization of disciplines. I mean, I always think of that famous Ray Bradbury quote where he's like, you know, a human should be allowed to do, you know the Ray Bradberry quote where he was like, humans should do a hundred different disparate things like specializations for insects. And I love insects, don't get me wrong, but I do agree with that. It's like be interested in everything. Be interested in soil, be interested in quantum mechanics. Be interested in cellular biology, be interested in painting, be interesting in literature, like the world is such a fascinating place, like why limit your interest?
Speaker 2 [00:28:29] Back to the idea of healing, I do want to talk about the most recent release, Ambient 23, and especially given you've made previous Ambient albums, if there was something you're trying to further with this, or if you approached it in a new way, if you could talk about
Moby [00:28:46] Well, the most recent ambient record I made, Ambient 23, it's different than some of my other ambient records in that in my mind it's a little more broken. You know, it involves a lot of technical imperfection, which might seem weird, but I personally find something potentially really beautiful in technical imperfection and I guess it's the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi is like when There's a degree of entropy represented in the creative process or in the creative output. I find that so interesting. Like a broken drum machine to me sounds more beautiful than a perfectly functioning drum machine. Um, a slightly out of tune piano is more interesting to me than a perfectly tuned piano. Uh, so this new record, Ambient 23, I just, I kind of didn't let anything onto the record that was technically perfect, you know. So there's stuff in there that's, some people would consider wrong. Like there's, there's noise, there is long, noisy spaces. There's, but it's, to me, it's a different type of beauty, similar to say the beauty of an abandoned factory. I don't know what else to compare it to, but it's that, that sort of wobby side, wobby, sobby and tropic.
Speaker 2 [00:30:15] It gets back to that old versus new idea, you know.
Speaker 3 [00:30:18] Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 [00:30:18] Cinema cook lenses are sort of prized and very expensive because they have that kind of aged apparition, something that you just can't replicate with a new lens. Is it sort of like that? You kind of, sometimes the old aged thing gives you that je ne sais quoi that you just can't make with a perfect machine.
Moby [00:30:39] I mean, occasionally I love a great sounding, perfect microphone recording, a great-sounding, perfectly-tuned piano. Like sometimes you need to do that, but sometimes it's really nice to avail yourself of the sort of the beauty of imperfection. And it's the same thing with film. Like, you know, because I also have a film and TV production company, Sometimes we're shooting with... Incredibly expensive, perfect cameras, we also have some super 8 cameras. They're both wonderful and like what's really nice about the world in which we live, you don't have to choose between the two. You know, like you can have you know, technically perfect production right next to technically imperfect production and sometimes the two incorporated in the same composition.
Speaker 2 [00:31:30] And you chose ambient music because, I take it, this means something to you. You talk about Brian Eno, the effect that had. But you also mentioned how, I think the studies are heavy metal fans of some of the lowest blood pressure and that's sort of counterintuitive to what you'd think. Why is it ambient music for you?
Moby [00:31:50] I mean, when I was working on the most recent ambient album, I was also making a documentary about the history of punk rock and animal rights. I was finishing an orchestral album for Deutsche Gramophone. I have a record label called Always Centered at Night. That's much more sort of like rhythmic R&B soul music. I've also started a new label called Incoate. That's more like electronic music. So I'm a dilettante, you know, like I love working on a hundred different things at the same time. And I've never understood anyone who picks one and only one form of creative expression, you know, like I've, I appreciate that there are jazz guitarists who only play jazz. I'm just glad I don't have to be one of them because it seems so restricting, like, like don't you want to play heavy metal sometimes? Don't you wanna play classical sometimes? Don't want to play weird electronic music sometimes? Like, so when I make ambient music, I'm also doing a hundred different things that are definitely not ambient music.
Speaker 2 [00:32:53] When you're playing it, and then I'll move on to another idea, but when you're playing it as we're gonna see a little bit, is there a way you can describe sort of the feeling that you have in your mind? Is there a way you could impart that to us that is healing for you? Does it heal you?
Moby [00:33:11] In terms of describing the sort of the mental state or the emotional state around creating ambient music, I don't know how to describe it. What I can, a little more academically, talk about is, and it's an epiphany that I had a while ago, or at least a realization I had awhile ago, that, in the most literal sense, just let that pass. In the most literal sense, and I'm not being facetious, I'm trying to make some rhetorical point, music has never existed. There has never, ever been. Because, and I'm not saying some absurd statement, literally that is the case, there has never been music. All music is, is air molecules hitting us in a trillionth of a second slightly differently. You know, when you're near a jackhammer or you're a near a cello, they're both using the same raw materials, air molecules. They're not creating anything. One is an annoying sound, another's a beautiful sound. One makes us annoyed, one makes us cry. Neither has created anything. And that aspect of it, like it's so fascinating that 100,000 people in a stadium jumping up and down at a festival, they're jumping up down to air molecules. Someone crying listening to a cello sonata, they're crying to air molecule. That is so remarkable that there's not just an industry around music, but that every person on the planet has such profound emotional reactions to music. And so I will say, when I'm working on music, whatever type of music it is, and when there are those moments of calm transcendence, it does sort of feel like, whatever spirit might be, is it sort of being represented in those moments. So I don't know if that describes my emotional state, but the fact that music is nothing more than the movement of air molecules, It's somehow Clearly, just look at a few hundred trillion examples of people responding to music. It clearly conveys something pertaining to spirit.
Speaker 2 [00:35:38] Brilliant. You beat me to the punch on a question we love to ask, which is if you ever just think about how air moving through space makes you cry. It is sort of cosmically mind-blowing. You also just referenced just how prolific you are and how you just seem to love making all the time. What, you know, thinking more about creativity now, what is that endless drive, as soon as that alarm ends? What is that, endless drive? Is it a sort of lack of satisfaction, or is it something else? You'll have a moment to think about that.
Speaker 4 [00:36:23] Hopefully
Speaker 2 [00:36:25] I thought those were illegal.
Moby [00:36:29] I mean, leaf blowers are illegal too.
Speaker 2 [00:36:31] Are they really? Yeah.
Moby [00:36:33] Oh, here we go. Okay, sorry. Okay, so now, wait.
Speaker 2 [00:36:37] What is, so you just make, you're constantly making, you always have, what is that endless drive in you to do that?
Moby [00:36:44] Well, in terms of my compulsion to make things, because that's pretty much all I do. I don't date, I don't socialize, I have a very small family who I see every couple of years. I was reading some, you know, like every news outlet will have like, oh, like the eight ingredients for happiness. And it was like, spend more time with your family, travel more, have more. I was like oh no, no, I love my family, but I don't need to see them. Like we can text every now and then, great. The idea of, like I hate vacations. I hate parties. I hate, I mean, I really will do anything to avoid going out into the world. To do the things that other people seem to like and it took me a while to figure this out because like obviously we live in a world where people love vacations they love parties they love i have jomo the joy of missing out like one of my favorite things is when someone cancels plans Help me.
Speaker 3 [00:37:49] Oh, it's great.
Moby [00:37:52] And I don't know, making something, it's just... I can't explain it, that's like, I don't know if anything I make has significance, I don't know if any thing I make is good, but I just love the act of making things. I mean, of course, there's the hope is like, you want to reach people, you want to maybe create something beauty, beautiful. You want to create something that has the ability to connect with people on a deeper level. But ultimately it's just that, that desire to make things, you know? Um, I don't, maybe there's some childhood element to it. Cause as I said, I grew up in a family of weird artists, uh, But it's also just that sense of satisfaction. Like, if I'm being honest, like 99% of the time when I am social, when I get home after being social, I'm just like, well, that was a waste of time. Like, I got nothing. Like, why didn't I stay home and work on music? Why didn't stay home, and write? Why didn't I stay at home and try and come up with ideas? Why didn I stay and use the time more productively? I just don't. And, of course, Not surprisingly, a lot of my friends don't love this about me. You know, I have a few friends who've basically ended their friendships with me because I never make an effort to see them. I'm like, Oh, I like them. But I would just rather stay home and work on music.
Speaker 2 [00:39:25] And so when you make music, do you, how do you know something's finished? And you move on to the next thing. I'm asking that also as someone who has gone back and remixed, that's a big part of the music you make as well.
Moby [00:39:41] As time has passed... I've gotten to the point where I make music for the love of making music, you know, like I'm not worried about record sales. I'm, not worried about radio play. I'm not worried about promoting an upcoming tour. I don't in any way feel the need to be more or less famous. Like I, it's not that interesting. Um, and so when I work on music now, I'm just making it for the love of, making it and the hope that it might connect with someone. But so... The criteria for trying to determine when something's finished. It was a lot different years ago when I was more anxious and I was worried about radio play or worried about critical reviews. Like I stopped reading reviews or press or anything about me probably 15 years ago. And so now something is finished when it seems right. Doesn't mean it is, it's subjective, but like when it feels... When it just feels finished, when it feels accomplished, when it feel like I can't, either I can figure out what more to do to it, or I don't want to do more to it. But there are probably lots of instances where other people would listen to my finished music and think, oh, that could be so much better. That could have been, you could have worked on it more. And I'm like, yeah, but as we've talked about, I love the idea of also leaving room for the imperfection. You know, leaving room for the vulnerability, leaving room for that, even at times, awkward humanity. You know, I get really bored with perfection.
Speaker 2 [00:41:22] So, you know, it's interesting you talk about. You're wanting to be home and not loving mingling as much. Because you've started this Always Centered at Night. Did I say that right? You love to collaborate. And so to me, that's a bit of a continuity issue for you. What is it about making something that makes you love to be social?
Moby [00:41:51] Oh, well, when I collaborate with people, I'm not social. I mean, sometimes you sort of have to be. There's a great singer who, before we worked together, insisted that we meet up for lunch. And I was like, mm, okay. Really lovely person, but I was perfectly happy to just go into a studio and work on music. We don't need to be pals. Yeah, I love some of the people I've worked with and I've collaborated with David Bowie and Lou Reed and so many people and it's like, I love the people that I've work with, but I'm mainly, I mean like maybe this is a little monomaniacal of me, but like I'm mainly interested in them for their voice. Wait for that to pass.
Speaker 3 [00:42:36] Thank you very much.
Moby [00:43:03] Okay. But I don't really, I mean, I think that I...
Speaker 2 [00:43:13] Yeah, well, I'm going to ask a follow-up. OK, thank you. So is it a similar process for you in making a song? So you just want their voice. Well, you've worked with samples. Is that the same idea, except that the sample you can control, or is it different?
Moby [00:43:34] I mean, to be honest with you, I haven't really worked with samples for a while. And when I worked with the samples, it wasn't the love of working with samples. It was the fact that I'm not a great singer. You know, my voice is okay. Like I'm a solid B minus singer, but I learned a long time ago. If I want to have big, beautiful, special, diverse voices on my records, I have to either work with samples or live singers. So when I work with the sample, I was just looking for voices and it didn't It wouldn't matter to me if it was... Sample like a previously recorded sample or a live singer. So like my approach to music and hopefully to a lot of things is I have no attachment. I don't think there's anything sacrosanct or remarkable about the individual compositional variables. You know, I love acoustic guitar. I also love synthesizers. I love an orchestra. I also love a drum machine. Like they're all great. They all have their place. So like, to me, it doesn't matter what the compositional elements are. It's the end result that matters. It doesn't even matter if I'm involved. Like, sometimes I work on music and I realize, oh, I'm not really all that. Like I'm not playing an instrument. I'm working with an orchestra. I working with a choir. I working with different people and realizing like, I don't care. Like it's that ultimate pursuit. Of an end result, a piece of music or a piece of performed music or piece of recorded music that has that, what I subjectively determined to be like just that quality of beauty or transcendence. I don't get there, but it seems like an interesting thing to constantly be pursuing.
Speaker 2 [00:45:18] I just have a couple more sort of disparate questions and I'm going to open it up to see if we have anything. I'm curious, you know, technology, one of the things you could say about it today is that it's really democratized music. Kids can, with GarageBand, make music in a way that maybe they couldn't before. Do you have a thought about arts education in how kids are raised and technology's usefulness as a tool for kids to have more access?
Moby [00:45:48] I mean, there's definitely been a huge shift over the last 15 years. You know, up until 15 years ago, 99.9% of the people on the planet were an audience and 0.1% of people on planet were making art or music for that audience. And now with social media, with phones, with apps, with AI, with all these tools, everyone's a performer. Everyone's a creative, you know, creator. And great, although what I'm not hearing, what I am not seeing, and I hate to say this, I don't know about the masterpieces. Like there's a lot of democratic creation, which is wonderful, but where are the master pieces? Like a friend brought up a very depressing point, and I don't want to be an old cranky guy, but like at this point in the 20th century, so much had already happened, like so many masterpieces had been created. At this point in our century, I can't think of a masterpiece. I can think of some nice things, I think of nice movies, some good books, some good pieces of music. I don't know, and maybe history will prove me wrong, but like I just, I see an abundance of creative output, I don t see masterpieces. Because I really do think the masterpieces are not created by someone on their phone on the subway. You know, to be very clear, I'm all in favor of people making things on their phone on the subway. But that's not how you make a masterpiece. You make a master piece by studying your craft for decades. By being so accomplished that you know how to express yourself. And by spending, you know, the Malcolm Gladwell thing of 10,000 hours. I would say it's a hundred thousand hours, you have to spend your life trying to make something great. In order to usually make something great. And so we have a wonderful world of egalitarian democratic creation. We don't have a lot of masterpieces, you know? And that is, maybe we do and I don't know about them, but like compare the first 25 years of this century to the first twenty-five years of last century. There's no comparison.
Speaker 2 [00:48:10] Fascinating thought and definitely a unique perspective. We haven't we haven't heard that before That leads me to my last sort of capital letter question, which is what do you suppose is creative?
Moby [00:48:25] I mean, creativity, there's so many obvious reasons why we create, you know, meaning evolution has given us brains, like our ancestors, who were really good at figuring out strange things to do with a stick. That's creativity. And it also enabled them to survive. You know, the people who are like, oh, we can make fire rather than wait for lightning strikes or live by a volcano like That's creativity. You know, the people are like, wow, rather than sit under trees, we could build shelters for ourselves. That's creative. Like there's a survival component to it. But I would say also there's an existential component to it and what I mean by that is we're little bitty biological creatures in a universe that's 15 billion years old, comprised of a trillion galaxies. There's no way we can have any ontological understanding of anything, the paradox being we're a product of that same universe that we do not understand, and I would say that creativity is a way of existing within that context, you know, within that confusion of – because sometimes creativity can be, as we know, it can be mournful, it can be celebratory, it could be joyful, it sometimes even all at the same time. That gestalt emotional experience, which is a product of short-lived humans in the universe with a trillion galaxies. You know, even if we don't want to pay attention to that fact, we're all as aware of it. The only certainty is death, and creativity is just a way of sort of trying to make sense of things and find connection before we all die.
Speaker 2 [00:50:19] I appreciate a cosmic answer. That's how my brain works, too. I just want to open it up back here if these guys have any questions.
Speaker 4 [00:50:28] Great. So you're going to be answering a quiz.
Speaker 3 [00:50:30] OK.
Speaker 4 [00:50:32] And I apologize if some of my stuff seems to be redundant. You said you, this is kind of a simple question. You said your newsfeed is full of neuroscience, okay? What would be the most surprising thing, one or two things that an audience doesn't know about neuroscience and creativity like art and music, what would be a couple of things that would surprise people?
Moby [00:51:01] A few sort of physiological neuroscientific facts that might surprise people. One of my favorite, and it's a great one to break out if you are at a party and you wanna confuse people, is you ask people what percentage of an individual is human. Because everyone will say like, oh, 100%, I'm all human. It's like, no, it's lot less. 10%, 10% of us. 10% of our cells are encoded with our DNA. The other 90% are not. Bacteria, tardigrades, and so that is so fascinating. Like, not only do we not know our place in the universe, we don't even know who we are. The fact that there are more cells in my stomach than there are in my entire rest of my body. Like, that's a remarkable fact with existential overtones and consequences. One sort of neurological fact that I find incredibly fascinating is that neurogenesis, the ability to grow new neurons happens as long as a person's alive, because up until recently, there was always this assumption that like at a certain point in the development of a human, you would at some point, like you had all the brain cells you were ever going to have, but now, especially in the hippocampus, they realized If you live a relatively stress-free existence, if you have a healthy diet, if you don't expose yourself to toxins, if you do things like exercise, listen to music, play music, have spiritual connection, you can promote and have neurogenesis. You know, you can be creating billions and billions of new neurons a day, which I find to be really encouraging.
Speaker 4 [00:52:49] So what can a musician teach aeroscience?
Moby [00:52:53] I'd say what a musician can teach a neuroscientist, and this is one of the things that Dr. Sacks and Dr. Tumano sort of taught me, is there's the old 19th century idea of phrenology. You know, like, this is the part of me that likes bread. This is the parts of me that wants to commit crimes. This is a part of that leaves the toilet seat up. And clearly that was discredited. There's a little bit of truth to it. It's like there are areas of our brain to state the obvious that have specific functions. And what Dr. Tumano and Dr. Sachs and some other musicologists have learned is music affects the whole brain, very broadly speaking. And so when certain parts of the brain are damaged, like say the speech center, music can actually sort of work around and can heal that. Like, I've seen... And it sounds miraculous, it might even sound ridiculous to some people. I have seen people who cannot speak, but they can still sing. The same way I've seen people who can't walk, but they dance. And I know that sounds absurd, but there's video of it, and I've been there when it's happened, where you play someone's favorite song from when they're eight years old, and if they've been in a wheelchair for 10 years, they can get up and start dancing. You turn the song off, they fall back into the wheelchair. So that idea that Music, again, oversimplifying it's very broad, but music affects the whole brain and can bypass damaged parts of the brain.
Speaker 4 [00:54:29] I have one more question, which is, you talked about your composing and you said you were the test subject. You used that word. It sounds quite typical. Is that a different hat than just being the way you were a composer before you got into all this brain stuff?
Moby [00:54:48] Well, I mean, working on music, obviously you employ a lot of different criteria. There's technical criteria. To my great shame for a time in my career, there was professional criteria. Luckily I don't think about that at all anymore, but ultimately people respond to music emotionally and subjectively. And so I've, and maybe this is egregiously self-evident, but I've learned over time. If music doesn't affect me emotionally, it's not going to affect anyone else emotionally. Like I have to have a profound response to my own music in order to hope that anyone else will. And so I guess there is some sort of, you know, quasi-objective empirical component to that, but ultimately it's me being the subjective test subject for the music that I'm working.
Speaker 5 [00:55:45] As Chris pointed out, our show, our series, is about the confluence of art and science. Is there something in your experience, or is there something that you could extend upon, which clearly shows how those two have conjoined? We talked about siloing and all that, but what about when things actually come together?
Moby [00:56:10] You know, when I think of the confluence of art and science, the first thing that comes to mind, and it's so obvious, is Leonardo. You sometimes wonder like the great, the scientists who've come up with the leaps in science, that the truly inventive scientists tended to not be very siloed. You know, they tended to be, I mean, even Einstein was so engaged in the world. And obviously Da Vinci was as interested in art as he was in science, as he wasn't invention. And you have to assume that the creativity of artistic expression definitely benefits invention and scientific thought. I'm just gonna wait for this to pass.
Speaker 2 [00:57:00] Great stress.
Moby [00:57:05] Um.
Speaker 2 [00:57:07] Technology getting in the way. It's been pretty good, all wonderful.
Moby [00:57:25] Yeah, there's one last thing I wanted to mention about that.
Speaker 5 [00:57:40] That's a long one.
Moby [00:57:47] I'm really hoping that sometime soon internal combustion engines are just going to seem like smoking on airplanes or like, what a bad idea.
Speaker 2 [00:57:57] It's a boon for us all.
Moby [00:58:01] Yeah, it makes me think I had dinner with this weird dinner that my friend Steve organized with a bunch of different scientists. And everyone was an expert in their field. There were a couple Nobel laureates there. And my dilettante job, as it were, was to sort of raise the questions that exist outside of existing disciplines. And my favorite question. And there were a couple of the physicists there who responded surprisingly well to this. I said, is there a philosophical, I mean, a philosophical approach, even like, you know, like a physical model that neither involves gravity, matter, or time? Because I really think even like the littlest bit of, even on a quantum level, the littlest bit of scrutiny and gravity, matter, and time simply don't exist. And to their credit, the physicists were like, wow, that's a very unique way of trying to think about things. But from my perspective, also the history of science, oftentimes, thinking expansively is what leads to breakthroughs. Linear thought can be great for certain things, but it tends to not lead to those sort of the jumps or the breakthroughs, you know. I just. This question I was asking people the other day, I was like, imagine it's the 19th century and you needed to get a packet of information, you know, a book from Germany to Los Angeles. What's the fastest, like imagine you invent the fastest way to get a book, from Germany, to Los Angles. You'd be like, oh it's a train, it's a steamship, it telegram, it pony express, it who knows what. What if you had said to someone, okay fiber optics or satellite transmission? Neither of those things existed then. Like that would have been just crazy, but it's thinking, it's thinking the crazy thoughts, the nonlinear thoughts, that abstract thoughts, the artistic creative thoughts. Like that's what leads to true progress, you know? And if there's anything our culture is showing us, we need progress. Like the systems we've created are no longer serving us. They're destroying us to get ourselves out of that is going to require some phenomenal leaps. How do we... How do we save the rainforest? How do clean up the plastics in the oceans? How do feed 10 billion people without destroying the only home we have? How do protect against bacteria? How do prevent pandemics? How do stop or prevent climate change? On and on and on. The old systems are not gonna fix these problems. We need creative scientific thinking.
Speaker 4 [01:00:55] Somebody told us, one of the guys in the interview said that it's not about eureka moments, it's going, huh, that's weird.
Moby [01:01:06] Which is, I mean, and oftentimes the, huh, that's weird. It's like what leads to penicillin, what, you know. Like I didn't know that did that.
