ELECTRONIC EXHILIRATION
Moby Rocks Chapin Auditorium
by Jessica Liese '01, Arts & Entertainment Editor
Mount Holyoke News, 11/2/00
With an artist like Moby, its hard to know what to expect out of a live show. Because his music relies so heavily on electronic samples, would his set look more like a DJ spinning at a club or would he bring a band and replicate the samples live?
Moby's concert in Chapin Auditorium last Wednesday defied any expectations or predictions that lurked in the imaginations of Mount Holyoke students. For nearly two and a half hours, Moby proved that he is much more than just a techno wizard and demonstrated the potential for strong bonds between electronic music and rock, jazz, funk, blues and punk.
Opening for Moby was a British techno trio named Hybrid, whose hard-driving synthetic beats were nothing but pure electronica, despite their live percussionist. Most of the audience seemed bewildered, at first, by Hybrids music, but they quickly warmed to the group's enthusiastic delivery and began to move their bodies to the contagious beat.
As the audiences attitude evolved, so too did Hybrid's sound change at a pace that echoed minimalists like Phillip Glass and Brian Eno. From one initial beat and series of notes, subtle differences blended into one another and moved the pieces to an unexpected conclusion.
Hybrid's music, while an interesting and energizing set, was uncomfortably loud. The music was not heard so much as felt during much of the 45-minute set. Long after they had taken their final bows and left the stage, the insistent thump of Hybrids digital bass and the heavy backbeats was still pounding through many heads. This portion of the show could be heard as far away as Clapp.
Moby's set, while somewhat softer, did not lack any of Hybrids intensity and energy. His band resembled a museum exhibit on 20th Century popular music: a blues singer, a clean-cut Yankees T-shirt-clad percussionist, a punked-up female bassist and a drummer wearing nothing but flannel boxers and sneakers. Finally, there was Moby himself: quiet and unassuming at first glance, but as soon as he charged head-on into the first notes of his first song, a drastic change came over him. He darted across the stage with boundless enthusiasm, pouring every ounce of energy into his music as the strobe lights bounced off his bald head.
For the entire set as well as two encores, Moby rarely stopped moving. One minute he was pounding out a contagious riff on his guitar; the next he had run across the stage to attack the congas. He dove into old favorites ("Go") and new material ("Body Rock", "Porcelain") with equal relish, and incorporated several unusual covers into the set.
Clearly, Moby enjoyed visiting and performing at Mount Holyoke as much as Mount Holyoke enjoyed having him here. During the hours before the concert, he sat in on an Italian class, played ball on Skinner Green and chatted with students. In the evening, this friendly, approachable side of him manifested itself in the way he spoke to and played to the crowd. Between songs, he cracked jokes with the audience as though they were close friends.
Unfortunately, his sound crew didnt seem to share that same rapport. The show came across as terribly overproduced, with special effects too powerful for the small space of Chapin. The technical side of the show was obviously designed for a much larger venue, and as a result, the sound and lights were entirely too powerful at times.
The colored lights, while technically impressive and a good fit with the music, were blinding, and Moby's chatter in between songs was sometimes difficult to decipher. Then again, the fuzzy quality of the sound may have been partially due to the aftereffects of Hybrid's blisteringly loud performance.
Proving once again that his songs are not just cleverly-assembled electronic bits, Moby took things down a notch with an acoustic reprise of "Porcelain" in his first encore. The audience did not seem to mind hearing the same song twice, and swayed along with this subdued interpretation as Moby crooned into the mic.
Old fans and new converts alike could find little to complain about when it came to last Wednesday's concert. Whether concertgoers came in expecting energetic, live rock or pure electronica, they found shades of both, making this an enjoyable experience for all in attendance.