As if an electronic music festival around these parts nowadays wasn't uncommon enough, a rare DJ set from Moby -- yes, that Moby -- has been thrown into the mix for tonight's fourth annual Decadence at the Guvernment/Kool Haus complex.
"I almost never DJ -- in fact, I'd say for the last 15 years on average, I probably DJ about once or twice a year," says Richard Melville Hall, better known as DJ/songwriter Moby.
"Normally, when I tour, it's with a big production, but lately I've started DJ-ing again, and I've been reminded about how much I love dance music and how much fun DJ-ing can be."
The native New Yorker is slated to spin alongside a long list of electronic acts (enough to fill five rooms at the venue), including Dubfire, MSTRKRFT, Danny Howells, The Roaches, Junkie XL, Mark Oliver, Donald Glaude, Vinyl Junkies and others.
"I've got a bunch of friends who live in Toronto and there's really good food in Toronto, so I figured, 'It's a short flight, I'll get to see some friends, have a really nice dinner, play some records, have some fun and then hop on a plane the next morning,' " he says. "I love Toronto. If the winters weren't so brutal, I'd be tempted to move there. It's got some of the best parts of North American culture mixed with the best of European culture. It's NYC meets Stockholm."
When asked what he's been up to lately, Moby says he's getting ready to put out a new record (probably in early 2008), but he doesn't yet know what kind of record it'll be (he's been known to dabble in rock, electronic and pop).
"I've written about 300 or 400 songs for the next record and I have to narrow that down to about 15 songs," he says. "There are disco songs, punk rock songs, quiet classical pieces and ballads -- so, I'll either end up with a very eclectic record or a slightly more stylistically defined record, but at this point I have no idea."
One thing he's certain about is that he's not too keen on singing -- though he's not ruling that out, either.
"I don't know if I'll be singing on the record or not," he says. "I don't really think of myself as a singer. It's something I enjoy doing, but I don't think I'm a very good singer. I'd much rather work with other people than sing the songs myself."
There are some weird, urban-legendish stories floating around about Moby, so we thought we'd ask him to clear up a few things straight up:
SUN: Is it true that your great-great grand-uncle wrote Moby Dick?
MOBY: Yes, as far as I know. That's where I got my name from. My legal name is Richard Melville Hall, and when I was born my parents gave me the nickname Moby, supposedly because I'm related to Herman Melville (who wrote Moby Dick). Whether it's true or not, I'm not 100% sure, but that's what they told me.
SUN: Did you sign up to be the first popstar to travel to space in 2010?
MOBY: No. Richard Branson is trying to launch Virgin Galactic and he asked me, basically, if Virgin Galactic works out, and if we ever get the space ship launched, and if we start having commercial space flights -- would I be interested? And I said yes, of course. But there are an awful lot of ifs there. They don't even have the space ship built.
SUN: Did you show up to a photo shoot recently and (Canadian rocker) Bryan Adams was unexpectedly the photographer?
MOBY: Yes. It was interesting because my manager sent me the photo-shoot information and I saw that the photographer's name was Bryan Adams, but I just thought that was a funny coincidence. But then I get to the photo studio and there's Bryan Adams eating a carrot stick, drinking green tea. It was very random, but I have to say, the world is filled with dilettante photographers, like me, and he's certainly not a dilettante photographer. Like, he really knew what he was doing and the pictures were great. I was really impressed. You can give any monkey like me a digital camera and we can take decent pictures, but he was really talented. We mainly talked about raw food and veganism.
