Moby recently released the last making-of video for his album All Visible Objects, to give background to the track “Too Much Change”.
After the album’s release in May of 2020, Moby started to create and release these videos for various tracks to describe his creative process. In the one above, Moby talks through the jazz and house influences that he took into account for the track “Too Much Change”, which boasts a length of almost ten minutes.
Moby states in the video that most of his composition starts with guitar, but the song quickly evolves when he graces us with some jazz piano.
He tells us, in this same vein, “I thought I would add some jazz piano, roughly playing the same chords that the guitar had been playing, because I don't love jazz guitar, but I really love jazz piano.”
Ever the realist about his own poor vocals, Moby then jokes that he wouldn’t dare subject his adoring fans to anything coming out of his own mouth, instead opting to introduce the real vocalist, Apollo Jane. Even with her euphonic voice, at this point, Moby only has what is essentially a simple jazz loop that one might find browsing Logic or Garageband.
Again in his own brand of self-deprecating humor, Moby laughs that his “math is not great, but I realized that... two times sixty is one hundred and twenty. One hundred and twenty beats per minute being the sort of the de facto tempo for a lot of house tracks.”
With the track nearly finished, Moby adds the bassline and atmospheric orchestral music last.
Moby jokes that though the song was originally written in 2019 before COVID-19 was even a meme on the internet, sadly the contents of the song have become more relevant than ever. To Moby, the song represents all the existential fear and confusion of the past year.
Though self-aware of the irony, Moby encourages people to stay off their screens: “We all love our screens, but they're not real, and to let our emotions and our sense of self be hijacked by screens is obviously creating so much stress.”
Moby ends the video on a somber note, saying that even with the slight possibility of another video, he’s fairly certain this will be the last.