MOBY Interview

I love the process of making an album, I like thinking about it, I like recording it… And then in the act of releasing it, I don’t really expect that many people to buy it or even pay attention to it. I don’t see it as a means to a material end, I just don’t really care if music generates money for me. The joy that I get making music has nothing to do with that. Once it’s done and released, in a way, I don’t care about it that much. My criteria for evaluating the success of an album has changed a lot.

I don’t want anything from music, and in a way, that feels almost more pure and more precious to me. It doesn’t mean that I think the music I’m making is good or better than music I’ve made in the past… I just have a much more sort of direct and unsullied relationship with it. There’s nothing wrong with commercial success but to me it kind of muddied the waters. It introduced an awareness of creativity that hadn’t been there when I was growing up and making music without the expectation of an audience, you know? And that’s maybe one of the reasons why I’m one of the only musicians I know who loves the state of the music business in 2016.

I think there’s just less pressure to answer that question of figuring things out. When I was growing up, I kind of assumed that other people in the world knew what they were doing, that there were places in the world that had truly magical cultures to them. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that the human condition, no matter where it’s manifested, is kind of clueless and clumsy! There isn’t some magic place in the world where people are sexy and enlightened and know exactly what they’re doing and having the best parties ever. Everybody’s just sort of stumbling through life. I don’t even mean that in a pessimistic way, I think it’s kind of endearing! I’ve realized that there’s magic in the world but it’s not necessarily the product of humans or culture.

Where does magic come from then?

Well this is where I run the risk of sounding like a clichéd Southern Californian new age person. (Laughs) But to me magic is the complexity of nature and the ways in which the divine makes itself manifest through all different aspects of existence. The creative force of the universe.

“Music gives us a tiny glimpse of what’s actually going on in the universe.”

Is music one of those manifestations?

Music is one of the healthiest forms of transcendence and magic! As someone who used to spend a lot of time drinking and doing drugs, I can say that alcohol and cocaine are not necessarily the healthiest ways to achieve magical transcendence. (Laughs) Whereas music… Music can operate as such a powerful and profound healing modality even though technically it has no material substance, you know? But somehow it can make you dance, can make you cry, can make you sing, can make you drive across a country, can make you do all sorts of things…

And it’s just air movement.

Exactly, at its core, it’s molecules hitting your eardrum a little bit differently. One of the places where I look for magic is what I’ll almost call the razor’s edge between human perception and the actual truth of what existence might be. In our human form, we’re really denied an objective understanding of what might be going on in the world because the world is so unspeakably complicated. The most interesting stuff is when we can get a sense of what might be going on separate from humanity on a subatomic level. I think that certain things like prayer and meditation and music and science give us a tiny glimpse of what that might be, of what’s actually going on in the universe.

source https://the-talks.com/interview/moby/