aaamusic | On 22, Apr 2011

MOBY
Album: Destroyed
Released: 16th May 2011
Label: Little Idiot Records

Moby has this morning unveiled the video for his brand new single ‘The Day’ (out 9th May). Featuring Heather Graham, it’s the first single from his forthcoming new album ‘Destroyed’, which is released on the 16th May via his own label Little Idiot.

Moby says about the video: “‘The Day’ was written in a hotel room in Spain at dawn when I hadn’t slept…I wrote it on an acoustic guitar and recorded it on my phone, brought it home and re-recorded it with the old broken-down electronics I have in my studio.”

A deeply personal song about late night desperation and dark-night-of-the-soul disquietude, the video for “The Day” (directed by Evan Bernard) features Moby’s friend and actress Heather Graham in the role of a nurse/guardian angel “who gets to slaughter demons,” explains Moby. “I had this simple idea of Heather as an angel in a hospital. Evan expanded upon it and made it a lot more interesting, a lot more compelling.”

The basic plot of the video, according to Heather, is “a woman is lying in a hospital bed and I am the nurse and I give her some oxygen. Then it cuts to me as the angel flying, and then you see this scary demon.” The director elaborates: “She (the angel) is the defender of righteousness. She represents good, and she’s defeating evil.”

Moby’s next UK live show will be on 2nd June at The Roundhouse in Camden, London. Tickets are available at www.moby.com/live.

Moby will also be exhibiting the full collection of his photographs from ‘Destroyed The Book’ (out May 16th), at Proud Galleries in Camden from 18th May – 19th June.

/////////////

Destroyed, Moby’s new album and book of photography, is set for release on May 16th. Self-released on his own label Little Idiot, Destroyed will be available on CD, vinyl, and digital formats. The album will also be included as a CD with the Destroyed photography book out May 16th. Published by Damiani, the hardback edition of Destroyed is 128 pages and features 55 photographs taken by Moby all over the world.

To celebrate the release of his ninth studio album, a free digital EP featuring three songs from Destroyed will be available for download at moby.com. In addition, a trilogy of short films directed by Moby for each of the tracks will be released online.

Destroyed is a behind-the-scenes international odyssey with Moby, introducing us to a side of touring that is often unexposed; secluded time spent in artificial spaces like hotel rooms, airports, and backstage waiting areas. The album and photo book combination provides an intimate look at Moby’s world and his creative process as an artist, both the music and photos were created in the same period and draw inspiration from the strange and sublime world of touring.

Moby’s songs from Destroyed were written late at night in hotel rooms around the world. A soundtrack for empty cities at 2AM, Destroyed evokes nocturnal feelings of both anxious isolation and the comfort of quiet solitude. The result is a 15-track collection that conflates the atmospheric and the disconcerting with the enveloping and beautiful – a record rich in the kind of melodies that are lodged in the brain by stealth rather than with a bludgeon.

Produced by Moby and mixed by Ken Thomas (who has worked with everyone from David Bowie and Queen to Sigur Ros and M83), Destroyed was recorded using vintage analog equipment and mixed on a 1972 Neve mixing desk from Abbey Road. A cohesive body of work, Destroyed is best experienced in its entirety and late at night when the city has gone to sleep.

Moby has been taking pictures as long as he’s been making music; and to this day he carries camera wherever he goes. The title and front cover of Destroyed depicts the final part of an LED security warning: Unattended luggage will be destroyed, which Moby snapped as it flashed up in a deserted hallway at New York’s La Guardia airport. Explains Moby, “One of my goals through my pictures is to take the normal and present it as odd and to take the odd and present it as normal.”

To celebrate the release of the book, Moby will be exhibiting the full selection of photographs at Proud Galleries in Camden from 18th May – 19th June. Moby’s next UK live performance is scheduled for 2nd June at The Roundhouse in Camden, London, go to www.moby.com/live for tickets.