He Sees No Borders

Give most pop artists a chance to meet with the heads of the conglomerates that control the U.S. record industry, and they’d probably use the time to lobby for higher royalty rates or more promotional money for their next album.

But Moby, the 33-year-old New York pop auteur whose “Play” is one of the most acclaimed albums of the year, says he’d use the meeting to tell the titans why their bottom-line consciousness is contributing to today’s disheartening pop climate.

And it’s worth hearing the views of Moby, whose name is Richard Melville Hall and, as his nickname suggests, is a descendant of “Moby Dick” author Herman Melville.

At a time when pop music is searching desperately for new direction and energy, Moby stands as an explorer who is out on the front lines.

Like Beck, he is equally fascinated with both pop’s blues and rock past and its uncharted future, though he leans more toward electronic dance textures than Beck’s more formal, folk-oriented song structures.

Indeed, “Play” is being cheered for its restless experimentation much the way Beck’s “Odelay” was in 1996. Spin magazine has just placed “Play” at No. 20 on its list of the decade’s best albums--the highest ranking for any 1998 or 1999 release.

In “Play,” Moby once again explores questions of spirituality and faith in a restless age, sometimes placing vocals from decades-old field recordings in often haunting, contemporary dance music settings. It has sold more than 70,000 copies since its release in June--the most of any Moby album.

In an interview, the singer, writer and producer, who’ll be in concert Thursday at the Mayan Theatre, talks about his artistic impulses, the current state of pop and his message to record industry chiefs.

Question: It’s easy to get discouraged about the state of pop music these days. Do you see any reason for optimism?

Answer: Sure, I think there are reasons to be positive. One is that advances in technology have enabled people to do things that they haven’t previously been able to do. You also have lots of hybridization going on. Most musicians are realizing that the distinctions between genres are arbitrary and that you don’t have to sign up to one particular style of music for life.

Q: You may be encouraged, but record companies and radio stations still seem to prefer it when artists stay within narrow niches, don’t you think?

A: Yes, I think people’s expectations are very low these days. The Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys of the world have made people very comfortable with disposable pop. I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with disposable pop, but there needs to be a balance between the more serious, substantial music that has [driven] pop music over the years.

Q: Do you think this is just cyclical or part of a deeper problem in the record industry?

A: I hope it is cyclical, but my theory has to do with the major labels being bought up by conglomerates. Traditionally, record companies nurtured artists and let them develop over several albums. Now, labels are under such pressure from their parent companies to deliver huge quarterly profits, they have to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Q: That’s a view that is often expressed by critics of the industry, but it’s interesting to hear it from an artist. Is it something you personally encountered at a label?

A: I was with Elektra [a Time Warner label] for a while, and I left it partially for those reasons. In my meetings with some of the people at the company, they talked about market share with this note of terror in their voice. They were all real nice people and music lovers, but the fear of the CEO had been put into them.

[After asking for and receiving his release from Elektra in 1998, Moby has signed with V2, an independent label started by Virgin Records founder Richard Branson and distributed by BMG in North America. Asked about Moby’s comments, an Elektra Records spokesman had no comment.]

Q: Do you think that same attitude is throughout the industry?

A: I’ve talked to people at all the major labels, and they want to develop great artists, but they, too, are under such pressure to generate those quarterly profits. The result is they only sign stuff that they think can make it onto the radio in the next week.

This might sound funny, but I wish I could sit down with Edgar Bronfman Jr. [president and CEO of Seagram Co., which owns the Universal Music Group] or Gerald Levin [chairman of Time Warner] and point out that the current corporate thinking doesn’t just make for bad music, but it’s also bad business.

Q: What do you mean?

A: Let’s compare Bruce Springsteen to some alternative rock band that just had a hit single. Springsteen has made great music, and he’s made tons of money for Columbia and Sony, but he’s an idiosyncratic artist. If he had been forced to fit the mold the way so many acts are today, he might have had one hit single and then his next record would have disappeared and the record company wouldn’t have profited from his ongoing success. It took him three albums before he really [caught on commercially], and there’s no interest today in giving artists that much time to develop.

Q: Let’s talk about your own musical development. You started out in a punk-rock band, but then moved into the dance music world. How did that come about? Talking about boundaries, a lot of people used to look at those fields as being mutually exclusive.

A: We started going to clubs in New York, and the wonderful thing about the clubs at that time was that you were exposed to all sorts of music. You might go see a punk band, but you’d hear a reggae DJ and a disco DJ and a hip-hop DJ and someone playing industrial music. It was all coexisting, and it made you want to experiment with it, which was a whole new world in itself. I put out my own record in 1990 . . . and even though it was a single [“Go”] that I made in my own bedroom, it became a Top 10 record throughout Europe.

Q: That must be pretty liberating to be able to make a record in your own room. You don’t need a band or anything else. Is all that technology healthy for music?

A: I think so. The only problem nowadays with contemporary technology is that it makes it so easy to make music that is just OK. I think a lot of people don’t press themselves. You can spend an afternoon in your bedroom and you come up with what is a pretty decent piece of music, and I think a lot of people are getting complacent. The music of mine that I’m most proud of is the music and songs that I’ve worked on for months. Some things are fairly spontaneous, but most of the stuff on “Play” took months.

Q: What were your feelings a couple of years ago when the record industry started trumpeting electronic dance music as the next big thing?

A: It was kinda funny for me because the nature of electronic dance music prevents it from being the next big thing the way grunge was the next big thing.

Q: How’s that?

A: Grunge was supposed to be new, but it was still basically white guys playing rock with guitars. I love Nirvana and Soundgarden, but there was a huge difference between them and, say, Aphex Twin or the Chemical Brothers in the dance world. Unlike grunge, they use completely different instruments and they perform in completely different ways, and the ethos of the culture is different.

Q: If you were 15 now and just starting out in music, what path do you think would be the most exciting to you . . . hip-hop, electronic dance music, rock?

A: I like all different types of music, but I feel the broad umbrella of electronic is most exciting, everything from Massive Attack to Chemical Brothers to Aphex Twin to Bjork, everything from house to drum and bass to trip-hop to trance. To me, that’s where most of the developments in contemporary music are coming from.

Q: How does it feel to be experimenting at a time when that’s not encouraged in the record industry? Do you also worry that you confuse pop audiences by crossing genre boundaries?

A: I recognize that by a lot of people’s standards, I make sort of eclectic, sort of experimental records, but I never tried to. This might sound like a very cliched thing to say, but my goal has always been to make records that I love. If in the process, I make records that sell, that’s fine. But if in the process, I make records that don’t sell, that’s fine, too.

* Moby and the Boom Boom Satellites perform Thursday at the Mayan Theatre, 1038 S. Hill St., Los Angeles, 8 p.m. $20. (213) 746-4287.