Moby

New York City singer/songwriter and producer Moby was one of the most important electronic dance music figures of the 90s, whose crossover success helped bring the sound into the mainstream and established him as a progenitor to the crop of superstar DJs that would define the next wave of popular electronic music. At the peak of his breakthrough visibility, he courted controversy for putting a public face to the notoriously anonymous electronic genre and attracting scorn from techno purists. Early on, Moby fused rapid disco beats with heavily distorted guitars, punk rhythms, and detailed productions that drew equally from pop, dance, and movie soundtracks. Not only did his music differ from both the cool surface textures of ambient music and the hedonistic world of house music, but so did his lifestyle; Moby was famous for his devout Christian beliefs, as well as his environmental and vegan activism. Born Richard Melville Hall, Moby received his nickname as a child, derived from the fact that Hermann Melville, the author of Moby Dick, is his great-great-grand uncle. Raised in Darien, Connecticut, he played in a hardcore punk band called the Vatican Commandos as a teenager. He briefly attended college before he moved to New York City, where he began DJ'ing in dance clubs. During the late 80s and 1990, he released several singles and EPs and in 1991, he set the theme from the television series Twin Peaks to an insistent house-derived rhythm while remixing his track "Go," the B-side to his debut single "Mobility." The updated "Go" became a surprise British hit single, climbing into the Top Ten and he soon established himself in the U.S. as one of the scene's premier producers with 1995's critically-acclaimed Everything Is Wrong. After a brief foray into punk rock introduced fans to his other sonic inspirations, he transitioned into a new role as a crossover pop star with 1999's seminal blockbuster, Play. His path from then until now has been tortuous and unconventional, full of dizzying peaks and dark night-of-the-soul troughs. But through it all, Moby has never stopped creating art from a place of curiosity, frustration, joy, and exploration. Despite having one of the longest and most idiosyncratic careers in modern music, and after selling over 20 million albums, he rejects the notion of even having a career at all.