"I love trying all sorts of different things, but I like them to at least find their way into people's lives," Moby says. (Photo: Mark O'Neill, SUN)

Moby may be a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, but given half a chance, he'd join us here in the Great White North. He's even published an essay asking Canada to formally adopt America's bluer states.

"Canada holds a special place in my heart," he said in an interview here yesterday. "There are many things about the U.S. that fill me with loathing and dismay, and it seems that the culture and politics are much more sane here. I think if Canada were to make an offer, we'd all say 'Yes!' "

He may be stuck in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, but Moby has travelled widely over the musical spectrum in his career, from noisy punk rock to ambient soundscapes, electronic pop and reinvented blues and gospel. And though some of his forays were commercial disappointments, others -- like 1999's Play -- were big enough to put him in the enviable position of being able to try pretty much anything he pleases.

Or so it would seem. In town to promote his new Hotel album, due March 22, Moby expressed a keen awareness of his vulnerability in the marketplace.

"I have to exercise my freedom judiciously," he said. "If I were to make an egregiously uncommercial record, the label would put it out, but they wouldn't necessarily work very hard on its behalf.

"I love trying all sorts of different things, but I like them to at least find their way into people's lives."

Moby accomplished that in an innovative, if controversial, way with Play, the first album to have every track licensed for use in ads. The result was oversaturation, but also massive sales, paving the way for such licensing to become almost like the new radio.

"To an extent," he said. "Radio is opening up a bit now, but when Play came out all the stations had been bought up by corporations and rigidly formatted to a point where you had four formats, and if you didn't fit into one, you wouldn't get played.

"The only people who seemed interested were music supervisors for movies, TV shows and ads. So I thought, well, I've made this record I really like and I want people to hear it, and it won't get played on radio or MTV, so I guess I'll go with people who are willing to take it and present it to the public."

Hotel is another switch. It includes several musical styles -- and a bonus ambient disc -- but Heroes- and Low-era David Bowie synth-pop is predominant.

"In the past five years, the music I grew up with has been re-presented to me by a new generation," Moby explained. "I'll hear a 21-year-old DJ playing an old Bowie record, or a band of kids whose biggest influence is Joy Division. And I feel that gives me a licence to reveal my influences more.

"I've always resisted nostalgia, but if your past seeks you out, it's not nostalgia anymore, it's the present, like the generation gap has dissolved. And there's something liberating about not concealing your influences, and also in getting older and saying, 'I'm going to make records that reflect who I am and what my interests are, and if people don't like them, fine.' "

Like his other albums, Moby made Hotel at home, mostly by himself. But that could change next time.

"I wrote 250 songs for this record," he said. "So I have four or five albums waiting in the wings. One's a punk rock album I want to make under another name. But right now if I were to make an album without commercial pressures, it would be a quiet ballad record. And I'd love to go into a studio and make it with no electronics whatsoever. I mean, I don't want to turn my back on the 21st century, but I think sonically there's something you get in a nice room with musicians using beautiful old microphones and equipment. It's such a warm, inclusive sound."

Moby will soon tour to support Hotel, and promises to come to his beloved Canada in the spring.