MobyImma, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin★★★★☆
Fortune favours the rave at Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, where egg-headed techno titan Richard Melville Hall – Moby to most of humanity – delivers a pulsating set of old-school, floor-slaying dance escapism.
Marking Moby’s return to touring after more than a decade, it’s an exhilarating performance, drenched in strobe lighting and hopscotching from his early days as DJ to his unlikely emergence as the king of dinner-party clubbing with 1999’s Play album. And – because why not? – he even throws in a cover of My Lovely Horse from the Father Ted Eurovision episode.
Moby, at age 60, has had several careers, from underground deck spinner to chart topper and animal rights campaigner. He also has had his encounters with notoriety. These include a difference of opinion with Natalie Portman over whether they dated and a recent falling out with The Kinks after he dubbed Lola “transphobic”.
But none of that matters at Kilmainham. He kicks off with a techno-metal Bodyrock, then goes full dance-floor euphoria with Go, his 1991 underground hit that brought Lynchian weirdness to the house scene by sampling Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting Laura Palmer’s theme from Twin Peaks.
The show is a blast. It is also an act of reclamation by Moby. With Play, he was made the toast of the normcore mainstream, to be filed alongside David Gray and Oasis. A former punk rocker, he had become something every punk should despise – acceptable in polite company. But at Imma he wants to remind us that his roots were always rave and that Play was not the natural culmination of his career but a temporary flirtation with the charts.
Fans of a certain vintage are out in force – the only pills these ravers will be necking are remedies for their aching backs – and they will recall the golden rule of Moby gigs. Which is that, the closer he steps to the bongo drums positioned at the front of the stage, the more unhinged the music.
He demonstrates that lesson during Go, which goes full disco apocalypse as he ramps up the tempo and his five-piece band conjures the ghosts of clubland past. Elsewhere he randomly throws in the opening riff from Nirvana’s All Apologies and functions as a sort of hype-man at his own gig, whizzing back and forth, clapping his hands as two backing vocalists carry the load.
Moby’s music tends to fall into two categories. There are full-on bangers and meditative mood pieces – the raves and the rave-nots – and he serves up plenty of both in the shadow of Imma.
Moby at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, on Friday. Photograph: Tom Honan
The only hiccup is a cover of David Bowie’s Heroes, smothered in so much schmaltz you can imagine Simon Cowell giving a standing ovation on X Factor. It’s a no from us and the only instance where Moby seems in danger of slipping into the middle of the road register of his Play era.
But this villainous take on Heroes is forgotten by the encore when former American Idol finalist and singer with Gabriels, Jacob Lusk, delivers a stunning interpretation of When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die (made famous all over again by Stranger Things) and then plunges into a pummelling Natural Blues. The latter is the Play song that cemented Moby’s stardom. Tonight he and Lusk break it apart and put it back together as a ferocious groove monster. The dinner party is over, let hedonism reign (but not too much – everyone has a last bus to catch and a babysitter to check in on).
There’s time for one more moment of mayhem as Moby finishes with his early single, Feeling So Real. He’s back on those bongos to unleash a blitzkrieg of house piano and pounding beats that sends the crowd spilling into the Kilmainham night – buzzing from their brief encounter with Moby’s rave new world.