19 May 2011
When you’ve suffered from insomnia from the age of four, it’s inevitable that you’ll find a creative outlet to qualm your active mind; or at least keep you occupied until daybreak.
Moby says in his 12th album’s liner notes that this record materialised during the ungodly hours of the morning, when most of the cities he found himself in were asleep.
Destroyed sounds more like a refined model created from 2009’s blueprint, Wait For Me. It takes the melancholy and sadness (which was only sprinkled through his 2009 record) and takes it one step further in this calming collection of ambient isolation.
Tracks like The Broken Places with its oceanic gushing, the lethargicBe The One and album explainer and first single, The Day all paint Moby as the polar opposite of his early work. 2008 record, Last Nightaimed to fill dancefloors and target the electro/dance market, this goes for most of his work before 1999’s multi-Platinum selling record, Play.
Moby may be endeavouring to re-create his Play era, even enlisting vocalists Joy Malcolm, Justin Kielty, Emily Zuzik and Inyang Bassey to share minimal (we don’t even hear Moby’s voice until six tracks in with The Day) but impressive lyrical additions.
As discerningly milieu as Destroyed is, there are slight tinges of electro-pop throughout; Blue Moon expels up-beat, laser-like synths over a subtle base of low humming and in the track After, Moby takes a trip to African-American territory, the results of which bounce with energetic spirituality.
Destroyed may be the product of a sleep disorder but for all its tranquil sonic healing, Moby seems content and ready to benefit from it.
Destroyed is out now through EMI
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