Play

Was hoping it was the same CD that I lost. But it wasn't.

This January 1999 release from Moby is widely regarded as his best or at least his most ambitious work to date, winning a "Best of the 90s" status from Spin, Rolling Stone, The Onion's AV Club and, interestingly enough, The Des Moines Register. Well known in the rave-techno-ambient-electronica scene, Moby's music shows the future direction of this genre and probably much else too. It's not just the music of rave clubs anymore. It is the music of a mass-society that finds itself awash in voices, information, and echoes from a cultural history that has turned increasingly inward. Play's subtleties -- buried samples and sonic textures -- allow the medium to comment on the message.Play's liner notes contain Moby's views on Fundamentalism, prisons and crime, his Vegan diet, the holocaust, and non-Pacificist Christians. He also lists a number of quotes from world religious leaders about animals. He adds, "These essays are not really related to the music, so if you hate the essays, you might still like the music, and if you like the essays you might hate the music. Who knows, maybe by some bizarre twist of fate you'll like them both." Moby's views on animals as food may not pertain to the tracks on Play, but there is no doubt that his spiritual orientation does pertain. Composed of Philip Glass-like minimalist melodies and samples from Hip-Hop artists, old Blues and Gospel songs, Play employs the materialist-spawned tools of what Walter Benjamin called the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in order to engage our digitized souls in a sustained self-examination.Play begins with "Honey" (sampled from Bessie Jones' "Sometime") which leads into "Find my Baby" (Boy Blue's "Joe Lee's Rock"). Both songs have some heavy synthesizer overlays that establish one of the album's motifs along with a theme of loss and longing for the return of a lover. "Porcelain," an intimate confession of dreams of death and jealousy, a song of farewell and regret (vocals by Moby), opens with the heavy synth, acquires a slow beat, and finally a piano melody tripping out note by note that re-emerges in many of the later tracks. "Why does my heart feel so bad?" (Shining Light Gospel Choir) asks that question again and again, the contemporary equivalent of a liturgical recitative. "Southside," words and vocals by Moby, describes a dark day and night marked by endless cycles of routine: artificial light, rain, television, driving across town packing weapons, and picking up friends. "Rushing" begins slowly and returns to the piano of "Porcelain," picking up tempo and arriving at a rushing-stream, Glass-like melody somewhat reminiscent of Moby's "God Moving over the Face of the Waters" and the dramatic fourteenth track, "Everloving." "Bodyrock" loops fast-paced samples of Bobby Robinson's "Love Rap" (performed by Spoony G and the Treacherous 3). "Natural blues" is based on samples from Vera Hall's pleading "Trouble So Hard" where the major question is "Don't nobody know my troubles but God?" In the eleventh track, "Run on" (samples from "Run on for a Long Time" by Bill Landford and The Landfordaires), Moby levels the gospel guns at us. You can "run for a long time," but "God Almighty is gonna cut you down" if you don't help your fellow man or if you "go to church just to signify," among other things. "If things were perfect" is a spoken word piece where Moby meditates on a cold, empty city at night, wishing for summer. The next three tracks-"Everloving," "Inside," and "Guitar flute and string"-are instrumental. Another spoken-word track, "The sky is broken," observes the morning after a storm, acting as a reprise to the confessional "Porcelain."

If I had the time, and space, I could write a term paper about this seminal, remarkable album from one of the world's great musical artists, Moby. But that would probably bore readers (and me) to death.What I will say is that Play almost single-handedly changed my musical life. In a sense. It was the late 90s / early aughts and I was just waking up to a new generation of musical artists like Radiohead, Moby, The Chemical Brothers and learning about how electronic music and digital technology was transforming music in ways we are still trying to understand. I had heard Moby on the also seminal soundtrack to the film, The Saint and was kind of blown away. I decided to buy a CD and, after acquiring the cheekily-titled I like to Score I bought Play.Wow. Just Wow. Moby was using samples, combined with his own original compositions to create completely new songs, but he also was a pretty good bespoke song writer. Play weaves a marvelous musical tapestry, with a variety of existing, usually obscure source material -- such as a virtually unknown song by Southern Gospel group BIll Landford and the Landfordaires (Run On) – to which he adds own musical enhancement, sometimes beats, sometimes background chords, sometimes melody to create something completely new. The opening track, Honey, sets the tone with its combination of a “call and response” type of African American tune with a fierce drum track, and Moby’s trademark muscular piano.Then he effortlessly weaves in, a few tracks later, the achingly beautiful Porcelein, which has become a Moby standard and one of his most beloved songs. Here, he inverts the formula, and most of the song is his music and lyrics, with a sampled backround vocal of a man singing “woman”. Again, wow.I could go on, but if you like Electronica, you like great music, drum, piano, guitar, great song-writing, and can stomach sampling done in a way that you probably have never heard before, Play is for you. In some ways this is the album that really put Moby on the map. And oh, what a country the elfin, balding musical geek is. Thank God Moby exists in our world.

Moby isnt so terrible, but most people wont like him. I bought this album for "Porcelain" and "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?". I probably shouldve bought his Greatest Hits instead because it would have more songs i like.

Todo ok

I don't buy a lot of new release vinyls because I often feel like it's just not worth it. This is not exception. It's a blah pressing. Not particularly dynamic, just not overly exciting. But, it's my wife's favorite album, so I got it. The pressing is fine. It's generally flat but it was quite dirty. If you get one, I would urge you to clean it because otherwise it will likely damage your needle. Overall, I do not believe that this is worth the price if you have another format and/or a streamable version.

I always find reviewing music difficult as it is something very personal and open to interpretation but here goes anyway!I love this album. Although I find Moby hit and miss this is one that I keep coming back to listen to time and again. It has an unusual and original sound, being both quite modern and for want of a better word “futuristic” while also capturing very well a traditional bluesy feel. Although it is somewhat depressing to think that this was released way way way back in 1999 it does feel very much a album from that era, in that prior to the millennium there was a explosion of almost optimistic futurism.I accept that this is probably a terrible review, and that is in no small part because Moby is very hard to tie down and define, but if you are a fan of the blues, that ambient/electronica sound and want something that has both depth and complexity but you can chill to, I would very heartily recommend this album.

This album (and more to the point Moby) received a lot of backlash after almost every track seemed to be used in one advertising campaign or another. At the time Play came out I heard some of the tracks by proxy due to living in a student house but never bought the record. Now 20 years later and with more than a hint of nostalgia for my student days I bought the album and I'm glad I did. All of the tracks hold together very well and make the album very cohesive. The latter half of the album touches on ambient styles which has in turn led me to seek out Moby's two Long Ambient albums which are flipping brilliant (they are available for free from Moby's website).Despite being battered in the later 1990s/early 2000s by all and sundry this album has weathered the storm; it's definitely worth exploring.

This is a really good album from Moby and am buying it again. I originally ripped a copy of this C.D to my computer - so as to be kept on a detachable hard-drive - when it first came out years ago. I then got rid of the C.D to minimise storage space in my flat. A subsequent scan of the hard-drive's contents - after buying a new computer - left the stored album with only track numbers to go by and no other details. It's time to remedy that - and I never scan my detachable hard-drives through newer laptops anymore because that does stored data more harm than good.Eamonn

This is A classic, so much so you have probably listened to some of the tracks because they are never off your TV, when they arent being used in movies, its TV Adverts, hard to stir still and listen to this folks!

Too much endless repetition of words and thumping sounds. Very lazy writing or am I missing something? This was really a let down for me, very disappointed, gave it to charity.