Moby: 'Last Night'

Hands up anyone here who still likes Moby. No? Odd. Well, not really. Since his genuinely enjoyable bucketload-selling 'Play' record, everyone’s favourite slaphead advertising exec, sorry, pop dance DJ, has struggled to reach the heights of the closest he’ll ever get to a ‘masterpiece’.

'Last Night' sounds exactly as you’d expect a rich pop star trying to recapture his rapidly dwindling youth to sound. Almost every track is a poor attempt at recreating 'Play'’s at-the-time likeable formula. Sampling vintage jazz and soul classic vocals and putting them to a house or big beat backing track with an ambient softness now sounds clichéd, forgettable and less accomplished than work from ten years ago.

You can just imagine the bored-looking Moby messing about with Pro Tools in his penthouse suite and smugly thinking to himself ‘hey, this works!’. 'Alice' is white-boy approved rap at its worst, 'Ooh Yeah' employs perhaps the most irritating sample ever and this horrible trend continues throughout. The odd decent track, like the gloriously soulful 'Live For Tomorrow' (arguably his best ever song) and the Snap (remember them?) alike 'Everyday It’s 1989' don’t save this from sounding dated, derivative and largely dire.

Released on 12th May 2008 by Mute Records.

Written by Nick Aldwinckle.