New York City-based electronic musician, producer and activist Moby shares a downtempo reworking of Cream’s “We’re Going Wrong” with Brie O’Banion The latest release comes following the official announcement of Moby’s label, Always Centered At Night.
On October 29, Moby will take the stage for the first time in five years at Gold Diggers in Los Angeles to benefit Vegans of LA Food Bank, alongside KCRW DJ Raul Campos. Tickets have sold out, but learn more here.
The idea for Moby’s version of “We’re Going Wrong” emerged years ago when he was going through old vinyl records and getting ready to sell them to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Listening to some old favorites, he re-discovered Cream track written by their bassist Jack Bruce. Moby recalls, “I was struck by how plaintive and beautiful it was, and how sadly germane it was for the current moment. I wrote a downtempo version of the song and asked my friend Brie O’Banion to sing it, and her voice brought a wonderful beauty and depth to it.”
Last month, Moby shared the healing, soulful track “Should Sleep” with collaborator J.P. Bimeni–a track that embodies the distinct carefree joy that comes with being on a dance floor surrounded by strangers after midnight. Setting the scene of the track’s origin, Moby recalls, “After disco died in the late ’70s, and before house music took the world by storm in the late ’80s, New York was home to an underground dance music scene that was curated and maintained by revered DJs like Larry Levan and David Mancuso. As a punk rocker in the early ’80s, I went out to clubs like Great Gildersleeves and the Ritz to see bands like Black Flag and Bad Brains.” Eventually, Moby found himself discovering new, hidden underground clubs but like the Fallout Shelter, Am/Pm, The Loft, and Paradise Garage, where he was exposed to underground dance music like ESG, Lolleata Holloway, the Peech Boys, People’s Choice, Cheryl Lynn, Manu Dibango, and countless others.
These sounds laid the foundation for the latest work, a track that Moby says transcends one’s background and identity, adding it’s “100% a tribute and an homage to that scene, when Larry Levan and David Mancuso played iconic tracks by loose joints and brass construction and the Peech Boys to an ecstatic audience of straight, gay, Black, white, Asian people, all joined in building nightly churches out of music and sweat.” Moby adds the track, “makes me feel like I’m on the dance floor at David Mancuso’s loft celebrating at midnight with joyful strangers.”
