Very pleased to have a guest review on the website from our very good friend Ian Davies (@iandaveez). He’s a frequent guest selector at Funkdub and the main man at the brilliant Surgery, last year they had a blazingly successful one off come back, with Justin Robertson. Anyway he’s also pretty handy with the words and has reviewed Moby’s memoir Porcelain, sounds like a cracking read, see what you think:
As I squatted on the sidewalk at the corner of Bleeker and Lafayette a bike messanger hovered over me. “Yo, what are you doing?” he asked, peering down at me on the sidewalk “Looking at the ants,” I said.
Thus begins on page 289 the first story in the book where it seems Moby might be starting to question his faith. There are many points in the book where you might question his moral values, but far less where he actually questions them himself. Here is a man that is undeniably obsessive about many things, possibly he isn’t even aware of his own obsessions; however I found my self in envy of him at times, because when he decided to do something, he actually did it…properly.
The book chronicles the 10 year period of his life from living as an unknown pauper in a Connecticut squat in 1989, to having achieved worldwide fame as a rave pioneer, to pretty much losing it all just prior to the release of “Play” in 1999. He hits the ground running when he leaves a raw mix tape with the promoters of the newly opened New York Club Mars and soon becomes a well known DJ in a burgeoning rave scene. An anomaly at the time as when he achieved fame with “GO” he was a sober, vegan, Christian in a world that was swirling with drink, drugs and, as the book explains, characters of questionable morality. You will be humoured by misadventures and intrigued as to his link with an, at the time unknown, Jeff Buckley.
This book is an entertaining insight into the mind of a man that is at times naively amazed by the world around him, and how some extremely “Sliding Doors” situations led him to getting the big break he yearned for.
Porcelain is published by Faber & Faber
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