New Moby album/book due in May

Moby will release Destroyed, a new album and book of photography, on Mute Records, May 17. Destroyed the album will be available in CD, vinyl, and digital formats and will be included with the book of photography. The book is 128 pages and features 55 photographs taken by Moby all over the world.

To celebrate the new album, Moby is making a free digital EP available featuring three songs from Destroyed. Additionally, Moby also directed three short films to accompany each track. Visit moby.com to download and view the videos.

Destroyed takes us behind the scenes on an international journey with Moby, introducing us to the strange and disconcerting life of touring that is often not exposed; the time spent isolated in anonymous, mundane spaces like hotel rooms, airports, and backstage waiting areas. 

These experiences are juxtaposed with moments and places of intense beauty in the world and the excitement and connection with audiences. From the absurdly empty to the absurdly full, Moby captures the universal situation that so many musicians and artists undergo living nomadic lives. The combination of the album and book of photography, created while touring, provides an intimate look at Moby’s world and his creative process. 

Songs on Destroyed were written by Moby mostly late at night, in hotel rooms around the world when cities had gone to bed and the insomnia that worldwide travel can induce fueled his need to create. A soundtrack for empty cities at 2 A.M., Destroyed fluctuates with nocturnal feelings of anxious isolation and comfort in quiet solitude.

The result is a 15-track collection that conflates the atmospheric and the disconcerting with the enveloping and beautiful – a record rich in the kind of melodies that are lodged in the brain by stealth rather than with a bludgeon.  Destroyed is an album that changes and evolves, exploring time, expectation, and ultimately the tension it creates.

Destroyed was produced by Moby and mixed by Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, M83) on old analog equipment and mixed on a 1972 Neve analog mixing desk from Abbey Road.  A cohesive body of work, Destroyed is to be listened to in its entirety and, preferably, as it was made; late at night when your city has gone to sleep.  

 

Events will be held in select cities to debut music and exhibit prints from Destroyed.  National Geographic will host the first event on May 9th called,  ‘Music on…Photography’, which is a National Geographic Music Live multi-media series featuring renowned personalities in the music world as they share their view of the planet from behind the camera lens. The event will be held in Washington D.C. at National Geographic Live

Clic Gallery in New York City will host “Destroyed: Photographs by Moby”, an exhibition that will run from May 12^th through June 26^th, featuring photos and multimedia work from Destroyed. On May 11^th, the book will launch simultaneously with the exhibit opening and will include a book signing. The following night on May 12^th at Brooklyn Museum, Moby will present and discuss his photographs, in addition to signing copies of Destroyed. Additional exhibitions and events will be scheduled in the U.S., including Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles in September, and throughout Europe this summer in conjunction with his concert tour.

Photo by Sunny Khalsa