Moby - 18

For someone who claims in his sleeve notes (or as he in that ever so pretentious manner likes to call them essays) that he loves Christ, "18" is an album that has been made with the full knowledge that he has sold his soul to the devil. If "Play" was an album that screamed "coffee table dance music for people who quite like M People and Jamiroquai" then "18" takes it all a step further down the wrong path...and in the process makes his previous work sound like the most revolutionary dance record since an imaginary collaboration between Aphex Twin and Alec Empire. What makes this album even more laughable is the fact that these 18 tracks are considered the best out of an alleged 150 tracks written over the past 12 months.

"We Are All Made Of Stars" throws us off the track with its 80s influences worn on its sleeve and the bubbling bass insistent in the background. Its one of two tracks where Moby's forgets about the advertising revenue and starts to make music simply for the love of music. The other track is "Jam For The Ladies" featuring Angie Stone and MC Lyte on vocals and taking us back to that old skool hip-hop flavour.

Moby has now become the soundtrack to the upwardly mobile middle England New Labour voting Friends Big Brother Survivor Reality TV watching Dido loving bores that frequent cafe bars form cheese and tomato wraps with the vague notion that they are being in someway continental. Its sort of aspirational clap track that filled the likes of "Play" and on "In This World" he even has the audacity to use the same "Lordy" refrain as used before.

When you consider that this guitars has made a punk rock thrash album in the form of "Animal Rights" and some of the best techno records ever made its a shame to see him throw away the innovation in the name of the dollar. He was in a position to truly make a revolutionary album after "Play", but unfortunately the true Moby fans are going to have to ride the storm until we get the album we finally deserve.

Alex McCann

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