2013 has been a great year for electronic music so far, with many of the greats returned and delivering some of their best works in a long time. So far this year we had Ulrich Schnauss return with his first album under his own name in five years delivering another dreamy ambient album A Long Way to Fall, Tricky releasing a new album similar to the sound with his debut Maxinquaye with False2013 has been a great year for electronic music so far, with many of the greats returned and delivering some of their best works in a long time. So far this year we had Ulrich Schnauss return with his first album under his own name in five years delivering another dreamy ambient album A Long Way to Fall, Tricky releasing a new album similar to the sound with his debut Maxinquaye with False Idols, Karl Hyde from Underworld releasing his stellar debut solo album Edgeland, Daft Punk saving dance music from the recycled corporate hands of will.i.am, while also giving it a new edge with the excellent Random Access Memories, Boards of Canada releasing their first album in eight years with the brilliant Tomorrow’s Harvest, BT returning to his pure old skool roots in the trance genre while also updating marvellously in A Song Across Wires, and coming up, we have VNV Nation releasing their new album titled Transnational.
Now, we have Moby, who just released his eleventh studio album this week, Innocents recreates a lot of the material that has worked to his advantage over a decade ago with Play, while also throwing the best elements from his last couple of albums (mainly Wait for Me and Destroyed) resulting in an album that is rich, pure, soothing, hugely sentimental and beautifully uplifting.
However this time, he’s not doing the album on his own. For the very first time, he’s worked with an outside producer named Mark “Spike” Stent, a grammy-award winning producer who’s worked with just about everyone in pop including Madonna, U2, Coldplay, Oasis, Muse, Ellie Goulding, Pink, Keane and Lady Gaga just to name a few. He even worked with one of the electronic greats like Björk and Massive Attack.
He also invited many guests vocalists on the record as well, including Cold Specks singing superbly on “A Case for Shame” and “Tell Me”, Damien Jurado delivering dreamy vocals on “Almost Home”, Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips sings with Moby on the gospel-chanting uplifting “The Perfect Life”, Skylar Grey gives a wonderful performance on “The Last Day”, Inyang Bassey singing brilliantly on the catchy “Don’t Love Me” and Mark Lanegen (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age) giving a haunting and rich raspy vocal on the emotionally driven “The Lonely Night”.
Even with having all these guest vocalists and another producer on board, it doesn’t distract that it’s still a Moby album and he manages to steal the show giving a nice performance on the album closer “The Dogs” and also delivering an excellent EP if you buy the deluxe version titled “Everyone Is Gone”, a thirty minute EP that once again shows off his great skills in making ambient music that is just as good as the main album.
He stills throws in his usual shtick on some of the tracks, but here, it is used with great effect. “Everything that Rises” serves as a brilliant opener that showcases what he has in store for the rest of the album, “Going Wrong” is a nice, soothing, piano-driven listen, “A Long Time” is another great vocal-sampled song and “The Saints” sounds a lot like Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”, which is not a bad thing.
With superb collaborators and a great producer and with Moby always at the centre of everything and obviously the main attraction, Innocents is the most creative, compelling and engaging album that Moby has put out since Play and one of the best albums I’ve had the pleasure of listening to this year. It’s up there with Karl Hyde’s Edgeland, Boards of Canada’s Tomorrow’s Harvest and Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories as one of the best electronic albums of 2013.
Track Picks
Innocents (Main Album):
1. Everything that Rises
2. A Case for Shame (with Cold Specks) ✔
3. Almost Home (with Damien Jurado)
4. Going Wrong
5. The Perfect Life (with Wayne Coyne) ✔
6. The Last Day (with Skylar Grey) ✔
7. Don’t Love Me (with Inyang Bassey)
8. A Long Time
9. Saints
10. Tell Me (with Cold Specks) ✔
11. The Lonely Night (with Mark Lanegan) ✔
12. The Dogs
Innocents (Everyone Is Gone EP)
1. I Tried ✔
2. Illot Mollo ✔
3. Miss Lantern ✔
4. Blindness
5. Everyone Is Gone
6. My Machines
DW Rating: 9/10… Collapse
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