Hard to avoid now, Moby is emerging from his techno ghetto. Discovering rootsy heritage he'd not shown before, his tunes are popping up on ads everywhere. He apparently claims if he didn't, someone else would supply to the ad agencies and, this way, people may find his music and his essays in the sleeve notes on vegetarianism and Christianity. Whatever the dodgy reasoning there, the hall was packed with people ready to worship the beat. We were there for the slamming toons and slamming toons we got. Ah Ah, Yeah, Feeling So Real, 1000. The walls dripped sweat and we jumped. So - how do you do techno dance music on stage? Get a backing track, a few other musicians and work to your samples. He didn't need the other musicians but it added to the live vibe, visually at least. He's a strange bloke - spent a lot of the evening apologising, played Springsteen songs (badly), played Whole Lotta Love, showed us his magic tambourine, played Feeling So Real as a jazz acoustic number. The flipside was an encore consisting of him standing on his keyboard shock- still, messianic, arms outstretched while the keyboard played 1000 all on it's own (world's fastest song - 1000 bpm). His job, backing tapes apart, was to jump a lot, occasionally playing guitar, piano or congas whilst still leaping around. From the opening I'm Gonna Find My Baby, energy spiralled up in screeching circles, rising on those trademark women's vocal samples until we were slamming off the walls. We got greatest hits. We got what we expected. And what we got was great.

www.moby.org

RossMcGibbon