Does anyone else find Moby's music to be highly over-rated

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Does anyone else find Moby's music to be highly over-rated 2005-05-21T21:40:53+00:00 The other day, I was going through some of my old tapes for some reason and I came across some oldschool Moby. And of course, it sounded super dated, that’s fine and acceptable. However, when I checked out some of the other stuff that I had from back then, the Moby stuff seemed to sound pretty terrible. When compared to some (I stress the word some) of his contemporaries (Praga Kahn, Messiah, old Beltram, 2 Bad Mice, SL2, Xenophobia and stuff like that) Moby’s music sounded really repetitive and kinda cheesy (or at least more so than the rest which is in itself an amazing feat). Anyways, fast forward a few years to “Everything is Wrong”. The concept is kinda cool. Laid back tracks with some bangin anthems and even some electro-rock hardcore stuff. The album does have its moments (even 5 years later, just before I stopped partying, I was still hearing cover versions of “Feeling so Real” played at parties [with vocals that weren’t out of tune]) and the few hardcore tracks are done well. Even so, this album has some of the worst and cheesiest synth patches I have ever heard. And the music surpasses my cheese limits (which are pretty tolerant compared to most of you probably) numerous times. And if you compare this one to its contemporaries (stuff like Aphex Twin, FSOL, Orbital, Goldie, Empirion, Underworld, BT, some Faithless, U-ziq, Vibert/plug, Photek, Ed Rush, Hype, the list goes on and on) this album is pretty terrible. If you forget about the fact that there are some supposed “juxtapositions” of different genres (which I kinda disagree with) and isolate the individual tracks and compare them to similar isolated tracks, the album seems even more unimpressive. Yet, somehow, critics (mostly the American ones) seemed to praise this thing. After that, I always felt that Moby’s music started to get a lot better. Apparently he did the age old trick of writing tons and tons of music and only releasing the “good stuff”. Well, I think that this worked well for the “Play” album. For what it was, I thinks it’s a fairly decent album and I love the oldschool Lomax samples (even though most of the tracks that use these samples just sound like cheesy remixes of some already decent music from archives that anyone outside of the field of ethnomusicology (or anyone who doesn’t have an appreciation for similar types of archives) seldom comes into contact with. In other words, they were already great songs to begin with). Even so, the synth work is much better and Play is a decent album. I also liked both of the Voodoo Child albums as well. Even though the tracks are very simple, with minimal effort in the arrangement department and the patches are most likely all just nice-sounding presets on our fav synths of the day, these albums have a certain charm to them and some cool electro melodies. Simple but they sound nice. However, “18”, hmmm. Other than a few choice cuts, I feel that this album is a return to the world of mediocrity that Moby will tread for the rest of his career (outside of a few more isolated tracks or possible Voodoo Child releases). This point is only proven to be right be the few new tracks from Hotel that I’ve been hearing. So, my question is, Why does Moby always manage to get so much attention from mainstream media and praise from electronic music connoisseurs when he tends to trod down this path of mediocrity for the vast majority of his career. There are soooo many better releases out there, yet Hotel is supposedly anticipated as a major release from V2. Comon, what’s goin on? Moby just gets so many chances to release mediocre music and nobody forgets about him. deggy https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=43494

kritikon kritikon https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2850: KVRAF; 8678 posts since 24 May, 2002 from Tutukaka, New Zealand

Post by kritikon » Wed Jun 03, 2026 11:00 pm

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Constructed Identity wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2026 7:43 pm If you’ve never seen them live you have no clue. Great concerts, albums are so so.
And Moby is classic right up to Everything is Wrong - I actually bought that album twice since I lost the case. I even had his signature on a poster once. Anyway neither have progressed since 20 years so they fade away.

Absolutely. Some bands really shine live and are an utterly different experience to what they record. I was listening to some band a poster referenced here on kvr (in the hw forum) that I'd never heard of before. They linked a live clip and I hunted down a few others of them live and...superb, atmospheric, big developing synthy builds etc, absolutely loved it. Called M83 or M38 or something similar. So I went on a YT search for their tracks and TBH they were rubbish - mostly sounded like MOR guitary soft rock or equally horrible. Didn't even recognize them as the same band on their live stuff.

So, yeah I can imagine Chemical Brothers being a bit more entertaining live. But their recorded stuff is very ho-hum. Same as Radiohead I'd imagine. I can see them being good live, but recorded stuff is extremely love'em or hate'em. To this day I completely fail to see what millions of others went gaga about on OK Computer - it's mostly noise to me

.Some bands just don't translate well to recording, or they free up and let loose when live, whichever it is?

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