Moby is a performer who is known for his unusual electronic sound. He was one of the most important musicians in dance music in the early 1990s.
Moby is also known for his environmental and vegan activism.
Childhood and youth Moby
Born as Richard Melville Hall, Moby got his childhood nickname. This is because Herman Melville (author of Moby Dick) is his great-great-great-uncle.
Moby grew up in Darien, Connecticut, where he played in the hardcore punk band The Vatican Commandos as a teenager.
He briefly attended college before moving to New York. Here he began to work as a DJ in dance clubs.
Carier start
In the late 1980s and 1990s he has released several singles and an EP for the independent label Instinct. In 1991, Moby wrote one of the themes for David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks and simultaneously remixed his track Go.
The updated track Go unexpectedly became a hit in Britain, hitting the top ten songs. After the success, Moby was invited to remix a number of popular (and not so) artists, including: Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, Erasure, B-52 and Orbital.
Moby continued to perform at clubs and rave parties throughout 1991 and 1992.
His first full-length album, Moby, appeared in 1992, although it was released without Moby himself and contained tracks that were then at least 1 year old.
In 1993 he released the double single I Feel It / Thousand which became another hit in the UK.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Thousand is the "fastest single" ever, at 1000 beats per minute. In the same year, Moby signed with Mute in the UK and major label Elektra in the US.
His first release for both labels was the six-song EP Move. His previous US label Instinct continued to release CD collections of his work against his wishes.
These included Ambient, which collected unreleased material recorded between 1988 and 1991, and Early Underground, which collected tracks from several of his EPs under various aliases, including the original version of Go. In 1994, the single Hymn was released - one of the first combinations of gospel, techno and ambient.
The song reappeared as the lead track for Everything Is Wrong, his first album under new deals.
World recognition of the artist
The fifth studio album Play was released in 1999. Exceeding all expectations, the album went double platinum in the US and reached number 1 in the UK. It debuted at No. 4 on the US Billboard 200 but was not very successful in terms of sales.
The trend for unusual sounding Moby did not disappear, and the musician released the album Hotel (2005) - a combination of modern rock and depressing electronics.
After several performances in early 2013, including DJ sets at Coachella, Moby released a single for Record Store Day called Lonely Night, which featured Mark Lanegan on vocals. The song was included on Innocents, a largely unsung album released in October of that year.
Other guest vocalists included Damien Jurado, Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips and Skylar Grey. The album was supported by three shows, all of which took place at the Los Angeles' Fonda Theatre.
In March 2014, Almost Home was released on two CDs and two DVDs. At the end of that year, Moby released an extended edition of Hotel Ambient, which was originally featured as a bonus disc on the limited edition of the 2005 version of Hotel.
In the second half of 2015, Moby debuted in the Moby & Void Pacific Choir. The first single, The Light Is Clear in My Eyes, is recorded in an older, post-punk inspired style.
The following May, he published Porcelain: A Memoir, which deals with the musician's life in the 1990s. The book was supplemented by a collection of two discs.
