“I wish we were playing somewhere that looked a bit more nice,” Moby wryly comments amid his set in the hallowed grounds of Greenwich’s Old Royal Naval College, before needlessly adding, “that was my attempt at humour.”
We’re spread amongst the lawn of this UNESCO World Heritage site, for the sophomore edition of Labyrinth’s distinct ‘Live on the Thames’ series. On either side stands the ornate buildings of King Charles and Queen Anne Courts – originally designed by Sir Christopher Wren at the turn of the 18th century – with the stage peering over the bank of the Thames.
Frankly (if Moby’s irony needed any explanation), you could hardly find a more picturesque setting for the evening’s entertainment. And with an artist whose catalogue of three-and-a-half decades has soundtracked many of our lives, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more compelling master of ceremonies.
Moby (the moniker of Richard Hall) had arrived onstage seemingly possessed by the sense of the occasion, strutting from one side of the stage to the other with his black Telecaster in hand bursting out the grooves to the big beat banger ‘Bodyrock’, of his seminal 1999 Play album.
Accompanied by rather dazzling technicolour visuals, the set unfurls with an understated brilliance that typifies Moby’s work, slowly casting hit after hit over us. From the Twin Peaks-inspired samples of ‘Go’ to the gospel house of ‘In This World’, where singer Nadia Duggin was stretching every vocal sinew, this was a set dripping in euphoria – a “microcosm of hope and utopia,” as Moby would later call it.
Yet the spotlight wasn’t merely shone down upon Moby alone, as he made sure to pay particular homage to the UK’s musical roots. As well as an impassioned tribute to the “celebratory culture” that spawned from the UK’s rave culture of the 90s (“the world owes you a debt,” he stated), there was also a rendition of ‘Heroes’ in honour of the late, great David Bowie – a friend and neighbour of Moby’s when the pair lived in New York.
The greatest cheer of the night, though, was for a recorded video from another eternal legend, Jane Goodall, who passed away last year aged 91 and shared Moby’s deep advocacy for animal rights and welfare. The moment lands with real weight amongst an audience that has, by this point, been thoroughly won over.
The set’s midpoint has other flashes of brilliance, with the reflective howls of ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?’ and the plodding breakbeat of ‘Honey’ showing either end of pathos and exhilaration that Moby’s wide-ranging catalogue is capable of.
Moby wisely commences the encore with firm favourite ‘Porcelain’; a track held in the same regard as Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ for conjuring an image of a significant milestone in everyone’s lives – be it heartbreak, romance or grief. Taking it in amongst the elegance of the surrounding architecture strikes a deep chord amongst the crowd.
To take things up a notch further still, Moby invites the exquisite guest vocals of Gabriels’ Jacob Lusk onstage, for a version of ‘When It’s Cold I’d Like To Die’ – a cover version of the closing track to 1995’s Everything Is Wrong LP which graces the opening of Moby’s latest album, Future Quiet, which arrived earlier this year. Lusk also joins in for another Play treasure in ‘Natural Blues’. ‘Feeling So Real’ closes things out on a suitably upbeat note, sending everyone into one last, unified dance before the Thames swallows the noise whole.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Moby repeats to us like a mantra. And whilst this chimes with his relatively humble demeanour (he had introduced his band by self-deprecatingly saying he was “the least talented, least attractive” member), in actual fact it’s us who should be thanking Moby – an artist whose seminal works should never be undervalued.
