Moby

The electronic music world's most famous bald-headed vegan – that'd be Moby- is up to his old tricks again with Last Night. The outspoken beatsmith—who had a verbal run in with Eminem, making him an Eminen'esis—has always laid ambient beats down his own way, and nothing has changed on Last Night. The album is a body moving collection of "poptronica": smooth electronic music that has more traditional structure than your standard beat-driven music. You know how you walk into an Abercrombie & Fitch in the local mall and the "uns uns uns" disco-dance music is cranked to deafening decibels and you can feel your gums rattling while you try to shop for a pair of jeans? Yeah, well that’s not Moby or Last Night. Rather, the album and songs like the self-explanatory "Ooh Yeah," which features a sexy and beguiling female voice panting "Ooh Yeah" have soft, almost delicate flow and aren't obnoxious and in your face. Moby makes electronic music with a modicum of classiness.

You can still get your groove on and engage in a little dancefloor bumpin' and grindin' to the thump 'n bump first single "Alice," as well as "Love To Move In Here." If you need to shake your thang or have a soundtrack playing in the background while the champagne is chilling and the lights are low in the bedroom, then Last Night should be repeat constant rotation for those romantic evenings at home.

—Amy Sciarretto
03.06.08

On Last Night, Moby is as blissfully out of touch with modern club music as he is current. As he explains (of course) in the album's liner notes, he has been in the thick of New York City club culture since the early '80s, and he takes the opportunity here to pay tribute to a number of dance music strains that have fallen in and out of fashion -- in a couple cases, they've recently fallen back into fashion -- including some angles he hasn't taken in well over a decade. The sturdiest, most appealing tracks tend to be where Moby breaks out with some highly energized combination of rollicking pianos, stabbing keyboards, and random divas, mixing and matching rave, Hi-NRG, and disco: "Everyday It's 1989," "Stars," and "Disco Lies" (featuring a vocalist who is nearly a dead ringer for a young Taylor Dayne) would've had no place on any of the last five Moby albums. What is long maligned and what is trendy sometimes occurs simultaneously, as on "I Love to Move in Here" (featuring Grandmaster Caz), a mid-tempo house track that can be sub-categorized as both hip-house (inciting wicked flashbacks for most haters of either component) and Balearic (as it causes that loosey-goosey, anesthetized-but-still-beaming sensation, prevalent in several of the hippest dance tracks released during 2007 and 2008). The poorly timed, not-so-appealing moments -- "257.zero," "Alice" -- with their distant transmission spoken bits and droning raps, might sound in step whenever the Soul Jazz label gets around to releasing rarity compilations with contents resembling Astralwerks' late-'90s compilations for MTV's Amp program. The disc's latter 20 minutes, containing contemplative, string-laden tracks, would be as suited for the Pure Moods series (i.e., beside Yanni, Dave Koz) as past tracks "Porcelain" and "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters." A good number of Moby fans who began to follow the producer's moves well before Play will be inclined to think of Last Night as the best Moby album since Everything Is Wrong. That the album involves several unself-conscious, rush-inducing tracks (rather than the once-expected token track or two) is enough for that opinion to have validity. Ditto the sensible and drastic reduction of Moby's own vocals. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide