All Visible Objects

Album review

Moby, a fierce critic of Donald Trump, has recently become more of a political figure in the media than a musician. But in the past few years, he has been rather prolific, firing out albums one after another. He started with the apocalyptic These Systems Are Failing, released in the middle of the presidential election campaign in 2016, then continued with the trip-hop Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt (2018), before dropping the second instalment of Long Ambients in 2019. He now returns with his most danceable album in a long time, All Visible Objects. If, as Moby explained, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt sounded like trip-hop because he had been listening to old soul and reggae records whilst writing them, then there’s a good chance he’d been rummaging through his house/techno records from the early ‘90s before writing this new album. The opener, Morningside, reveals the simplicity of the orchestration (a single “yeah” stretched out over an early rave beat) on this album that draws on Moby’s roots. It features early house, cyberpunk techno (Power Is Taken, with the drummer from Dead Kennedy’s, D.H. Peligro), downtempo (One Last Time, reminiscent of the ambience of his 1999 cult album Play), ambient (concluding with the title track) and even a tribute to Brian Ferry on the cover of Roxy Music’s My Only Love. This is surely proof that you should always look after your old records… © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz