Porcelain: A Memoir – Moby

A great read. Not really a straight biography telling Moby’s life story, or how he made his albums, but a set of short vignettes about people, tours, feelings and making music that link together into a picture of his life and how he fits into it.

I think Moby is one of my favourite artists, and “Everything is Wrong” is one of my favourite albums. I know he is most famous for “Play” and the myriad of songs that were ubiquitous for a time from that album, but I remember gettinga second-hand cassette of “Everything is Wrong” from Stereo1 in Paisley (at the time when I was massively into thrash and death metal). For a time it was all I listened to. I think I’d heard “Feeling So Real” on the radio so that’s how I’d got to know about him. Before that I’d considered techno/rave music to be crap – I didn’t get it – but with that song and some Prodigy I’d heard, I started listening to more. This album is different than a straight dance album though. It goes from pure rave/trance anthems (like Feeling So Real and Anthem) to punked-up blues and atmospheric ambient. Each song is a completely different style and genre, and it shouldn’t hold together as an album, but it does, and does really well. My main memory of this album is from around 1995 – at that time I was writing my final year dissertation in my 5th year at university, and I used to sit up all night writing and coding and listening to this album really loudly on headphones on repeat.

Porcelain: A Memoir by Moby
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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