Moby has used the occasion of his headlining set at the On The Beach festival in Brighton to pay tribute to the British rave scene.
The 60-year-old producer knows what he’s talking about, having had first hand experience of what was arguably youth culture’s last great cultural explosion. Between 1990 and 1992, when the scene was at its peak, he was a rare American interloper in what was largely a British creation.
“When I was growing up I was such an Anglophile,” he began. “I was obsessed, probably from the time I was six years old because I was able to watch Monty Python TV on Channel 13. But later on when I discovered the Sex Pistols and Public Image and The Clash. Then I discovered Joy Division and New Order and Echo and The Bunnymen. I just fell in love with music from the UK.”
Latest Videos FromMusicRadar
“This is where house music exploded,” he said, referring to the UK. “This is where techno exploded. And thanks to the originators like Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling and Pete Tong and Carl Cox… I don’t think it’s overstating it, I don’t think it’s hyperbole – you guys invented rave culture.”
Indeed. In the pre-digital age, Britain’s music scene arguably moved faster and was more agile than anywhere else in the world, due to its small geographical size and centralised media.
The producer and DJ shared a personal memory from those years – of playing a Raindance party in 1991. “It was warm, it was beautiful, a field in the middle of somewhere and there were 10,000 people just celebrating.” One tune in particular stood out, he recalled: Everybody’s Free by Rozalla. “It had just come out and everyone threw their hands in the air and it felt like perfection” before dedicating his final song “to the spirit of rave culture.”
Of course Moby moved on from techno and has done a bit of everything during his long career, ranging from out and out punk rock (his Animal Rights album), soundtrack-inspired music (I Like To Score) and ambient (his most recent record, Future Quiet).
His most successful album was the uncategorisable Play, which was built on a foundation of samples from old soul and blues recordings and ended up selling a still-astounding 12 million copies.
