Go: The Very Best Of Moby (Limited Edition) (2CD)

Trippy Euro-dance grooves and mind numbingly repetitive trance music is what a critic would (rightly) say of most "techno" music. That's not Moby, and it really never was. Ever since Eminem pointed at him he's had some crossover success. People listened to him. Now on Go-The Very Best Of Moby you can get a whole bunch of him in one package. Most cuts are terse by Moby standards at under five minutes per. On tracks like "South Side" he has a whole Philip Glass meets Lou Reed thing going on that's waaay deeper than it first appears. The groove is an "I Just Want To Celebrate" thing. The vocal is dark and sinister. By the time we got hip to this bag, Moby had moved on, or at least moved over. Forget for a minute what you call it. Forget about genre and class. Dig it for Moby and it's pretty cool. Moby is layered, nuanced and pretty clever. He brings a lot of out stuff together and makes music out of it. Warhol would have loved it.

Actually the Eminem criticism has a larger cultural implication. This music is largely self-depreciating and critical of the elements of society that embrace it. Look at us we're "Beautiful" is beautifully cynical and disarming. The guitars are all scratch and grit as a foil for the "Shiny Happy People" vibe. All that we need is a visitor from the New York club scene in the Studio 54 era to make us "feel good right now, like everything does in this town". Debbie Harry would do. Okay, we got that. "New York, New York" is a hot track. It's so disco it's techno. Remember this is a mixmaster's record (it's easy to forget) built of sounds, colors, textures and samples. This is collage music at its best. The set on disc one also features some stuff from Play that used old blues tracks to perfection. You don't update the Mona Lisa, you just use a Polaroid of it with your girl friend next to it in your own picture.

"Feeling So Real," recorded live in London, is the hottest thing on the disc. The cheers are cool. The "Ninety-Nine Luftballons" synth is cool. The groove is hot, hot, hot. This is a dervish trance groove, and it is positively frantic. Moby can be very dark, but he likes the energy thing lots. Moby updates "Go" with a 2006 version, and includes the hypnotic side too. The Best Of disc is far from complete, but makes for a good sampling of Moby (that's sort of a pun).

The second disc is a set of remixes of Moby hits. It's a great idea, but doesn't make it, especially in comparison to the originals. They're right there -- and better. The remix side misses the space and wit of the originals. Groove on disc one Go-The Very Best Of Moby and hang disc two up as a mirror in your car. The Pete Heller Park Lane Remix of "South Side" sounds like an outtake from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack. The concept is good -- the execution is weak.