VMP Magazine

“Well, I guess you’re the right person to write about this record,” a disembodied voice deadpans from my laptop, “since you’re the only one to give it a good review.”

The voice belongs to the electronic musician Moby, who’s speaking from his current home of Los Angeles (Los Feliz, to be exact), having moved from New York in 2011. We’re reminiscing about his fifth studio album, 1999’s Play – very much a product of Manhattan’s Lower East Side – which I reviewed 17 years ago in the July ’99 issue of SPIN magazine (not currently available in readable Internet form, i.e. you can try and zoom in on this). Gushingly giving the album a 9/10, I petitioned for it to be featured as the June issue’s Lead Review (coinciding with the May 17 release date), but a review of Pavement’s Terror Twilight was already in the can. May wasn’t an option because Blur’s 13 was the Lead pick. How much of a classic ’90s dogpile is that? You can practically smell the Dum-Dum Pops! Thing is, absolutely nobody would’ve predicted that Play would be more influential and far more successful than those other albums combined.