Moby: Where do you get your inspiration? | Big Think

Moby: Where do you get your inspiration?

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Moby wishes to escape the mundane.

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Richard Melville Hall, a.k.a. Moby

Richard Melville Hall, a.k.a. Moby, is one of the most important dance music figures of the early '90s, helping bring the music to a mainstream audience both in England and in America.

Born in Harlem, New York in 1965, and raised in Darien, CT, he played in a hardcore punk band called the Vatican Commandos as a teenager before moving to New York City, where he began DJing in dance clubs. During the late '80s, he released a number of singles and EPs before, in 1991, he set the theme from David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks to an insistent, house-derived rhythm and titled the result "Go." The single became a surprise British hit single, climbing into the Top Ten, and was named one of Rolling Stone's top 200 records of all time. Moby, his first full-length album, appeared in 1992. Since then, Moby has recorded eleven studio albums, including his multi-platinum breakthrough Play (1999), 18 (2002), Hotel (2005), Go: The Very Best of Moby (2006) and Last Night (2008).

In addition to his musical endeavors, Moby is the proprietor of teany cafe and teas. He is also a well-known advocate for a variety of progressive causes, working with MoveOn.org and PETA, among others. He actively engages in nonpartisan activism.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Where do you find inspiration?

Moby: What inspires me? Hmmmm, I guess going back to what I said earlier, the main thing that inspires me is to presumptuously want to improve the circumstances in which I find myself. Life of course is miraculous and amazing, but it can be really mundane, and one of the things that drives me in music or art or what have you is the desire to sort of make life less mundane. And maybe it is a personal failing of my own that I can never, I mean, because life is not mundane, but, to me, sometimes, it can be kind of routine and kind of mundane, so I sort of feel this almost compulsion to challenge that.