Moby aims for imperfect perfection on collaborative disc ‘Innocents’

TORONTO – New music from Moby is a relative thing.

The veteran DJ notes his latest 12-track disc is set for release Tuesday but was completed way back in February — an eternity in this day-and-age of instant releases geared to capitalize on of-the-moment trends.

But that’s just how Moby operates, and the 48-year-old electronic musician makes no bones about the fact that “Innocents” sounds nothing like the bombastic pop songs that dominate current charts.

“I’m not the target audience for it, you know, I’m not 13, but so much music today — and I’m not even saying this as a criticism, it’s just more a statement of fact — it’s crafted and disingenuous,” Moby said earlier this summer during a promotional stop in Toronto.

“It’s expressing emotion and sentiment that people think will work well on the radio.”

Commercial success is clearly of little concern.

What Moby does cherish is a meticulously crafted album, and with “Innocents” he admitted to stepping outside of his normal routine “to genuinely collaborate with people.”

For the first time in his career, he relied on a co-producer — Mark (Spike) Stent, who has worked with Lady Gaga, Madonna and Maroon 5 — and sought co-writers including Toronto’s Cold Specks, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, past Moby vocalist Inyang Bassey and Queens of the Stone Age collaborator Mark Lanegan.

“In the past when I’ve had singers on my record, usually it’s singers I’ve brought in to sing songs that I’ve written and this time I wanted to see what it would be like to send someone an instrumental and have them write all the lyrics and vocal melodies without any direction from me and just see what they come up with,” he said.

“When I would send someone an instrumental and they sent back their vocals and the lyrics and vocal melodies, almost in every instance, the results were really great.”

Canuck songstress Cold Specks helmed the first single released over the summer, the atmospheric “A Case for Shame.”

Moby gushes over the uniquely mournful qualities in her voice, noting he met her on the recommendation of Mute Records founder Daniel Miller.

“There are these sort of qualities to her voice, there’s like a darkness but an innocence, and very unconventional beauty,” said Moby, adding that they connected over a shared love of austere, plaintive blues music.

“She’s not classically trained so she’ll sing intervals that most singers wouldn’t sing but she somehow makes them sound great.”

Moby then turned his attention to nearly every other aspect of the disc — he generated and shot the artwork for “Innocents,” and when it came time to shoot the first video, decided to do it himself at his home.

“For better or worse, I’m the camera man, the director, the costume/wardrobe guy, I made tea for everyone,” he said of the video for “A Case for Shame,” which largely takes place in his pool.

“I was a little bit megalomaniacal or solipsistic in that.”

He said the no-frills production cost a mere $150, mostly for the masks that his actors wore for the shoot. Much of it was shot underwater, and luckily he said he has no problem holding his breath for “a minute or two.”

“Holding my breath underwater is one thing that for some reason I’m quite comfortable with. The hard part is getting my actors to hold their breath for a long time because it’s quite a skill,” he said.

“Because you can get very panicky if you wrap somebody in a sheet and put a mask on them, and if they start to lose their breath they panic instantly so it’s (about) accepting that you’re in a pool, things are going to be OK.”

The video for his second single, “The Perfect Life” with Coyne, features the two of them in Mariachi outfits surrounded by an array of weirdos including a ribbon dancer clad head-to-toe in black leather, roller-skating ghosts and a drunk king, adorned by a red, gold and white jewelled robe, crown and scepter.

It’s loose, messy and exuberant. And very much in the spirit of Moby’s overall approach to working these days.

Moby noted he didn’t tinker much with the lyrics and melodies his collaborators came up with.

“I’m not going for some sort of platonic ideal or technical perfection, I’m just trying to make something that feels right and that stands as an interesting document,” he said.

“When I collaborate with someone, their contribution, I’m not going to try to micromanage it and I’m not going to try and manipulate what they’re doing because we’re creating a document together. We’re creating this little time capsule. And we record it and we finish it and you put it out into the world and it goes on and has who knows what sort of life.”

There is such a thing as too much refinement, and Moby noted he’s wary of stepping over that line.

“Especially with music technology, it’s very easy to craft and construct technically perfect recordings and I do everything in my power to resist that,” he said.

“I’m not really that interested in making bombastic disingenuous music.”