hi, ok, ta-da, official next album announcement update (i would write blog but i still have some odd, preternatural loathing for the word ‘blog’, although now i’ve written it twice, blog blog blog. now five times. i’ll stop now).
so! next album update (not blog)
my next album is called ‘destroyed’ and it comes out in the middle of may sometime. musically it’s very melodic and atmospheric and electronic, and if i had to sum it up i would describe it as: ‘broken down melodic electronic music for empty cities at 2 a.m’.
that’s what it sounds like to me, anyway. and the music was all originally written late at night while on tour, as i often have insomnia and spend a lot of times awake in hotel rooms at 2 a.m when everyone else in the world seems to be asleep. so rather than buy more drum machines on ebay (as nice as they are) i try to spend my insomnia time working on music. then i take the songs back to my studio and try to finish them with my weird collection of old, broken down drum machines and synthesizers and i try to convince my friends to sing on it (my friends emily zuzik, inyang bassey, and joy malcom sing on the record, as do i). then i put the songs on a record. then i call it ‘destroyed’. then i put it out in may of 2011. at least that is the plan.
why ‘destroyed’? well, in addition to the album i’m also putting out a book of photos (with the nice people at damiani/d.a.p). i’ve been a photographer since i was 10 years old, and i’ve decided to finally release a book of photographs. i know, in the age of digital photography EVERYONE is a photographer. but i’ve been shooting pictures for 35 years with a nikon F, and i used to work in darkrooms, developing and printing, so i feel like i’m not a complete dilettante digital photographer.
so, the title: ‘destroyed’. i was in laguardia airport and my flight was delayed and i was wandering around and i saw a small sign that said ‘unattended luggage will be destroyed’, but the sign only fit one word at a time so i waited until it read ‘destroyed’ and i took a picture and somehow the picture and the title make sense to me when i listen to the music on the album and when i look at the other pictures in the book and yes this is a huge long run on sentence about the title and cover image of the book and album but i like run on sentences because they remind me of ‘a prayer for owen meany’ by john irving.
here’s the picture, i hope you like it (more information and text after the picture, so keep scrolling down, thank you)
in addition to the album we’re also putting out an e.p. ‘e.p’ means ‘extended play’, another vestigal descriptive term from the halcyon days of vinyl.
the e.p contains 3 songs: be the one, sevastopol and victoria lucas.
i hope you like them. the e.p is free free free, as i think that increases the chances the music will actually be listened to. also i’m the worlds best businessman, as evidenced by starting mobygratis.com which also gives away free music.
some trivia: ‘be the one’ was in the paul haggis movie ‘the next 3 days’, ‘sevastopol’ is an interesting city in the ukraine, and ‘victoria lucas’ was sylvia plath’s pseudonym.
i made 3 videos for these songs (all shot on little camcorders while travelling). the ‘be the one’ video was shot while i was flying from nyc to l.a and then edited by my friend jo haggis (paul’s sister). if it looks in any way good it’s because she edited it. watch it here.
‘sevastopol’ was shot while flying to brazil to dj with carl cox. watch it here.
and ‘victoria lucas’ was shot at night in l.a when seemingly everyone else was asleep. watch it here.
ok, i’m rambling. here are the salient details: new album released sometime in mid may (here’s the title and the songs that are on the album):
destroyed.
the broken places
be the one
sevastopol
the low hum
rockets
the day
the right thing
after
victoria lucas
blue moon
lie down in darkness
stella maris
the violent bear it away
lacrimae
when you are old
a book of photos, also called ‘destroyed’, released sometime in the middle of may on damiani/dap.
and an e.p released today with: be the one, sevastopol, victoria lucas
oh. and finally, i’ll be touring a lot from may – september, mainly in europe but also in north america. maybe some other places, as well, but i don’t know yet: https://moby.com/live
and i’ll be having gallery shows of the photographs in different cities, to be announced soon. and there are lots of other things to announce, but i’ve rambled on enough, so i’ll announce more stuff in a month or so.
thanks, really, and i hope that you like the album and the book and the e.p.
-moby
p.s-oh, you might notice that we’ve redesigned moby.com i hope you like it, the old design was feeling a bit clunky. this new one seems to generally work better.
p.p.s-here are 3 random pictures from the book that i like:
