Words and photos by Rafe Arnott, except where credited. Photo above: The now iconic cover image of Play photographed by Corrine Day.
Heavy Rotation is a column focused on an LP in my collection. It's sponsored by DeVore Fidelity. This month I’m discussing Play, BMG, STUM172.
An album for the waning millennium, Richard Hall's genre-mashing 1999 album Play, was recorded in his home studio over several months following the death of his mother. More Hail Mary than mea culpa, by the time Play was finished, Hall was halfway out the door on his music career. Years of middling notoriety and record sales, along with being dumped halfway through a 1997 tour by his U.S. label had taken their emotional toll. “I was opening for Soundgarden and getting shit thrown at me every night onstage,” he’s quoted as having said. But, he felt he’d give it one last try with what is essentially a dance album, albeit one which is revelatory in its mixture of house beats, samples and period blues/gospel.
Play was Hall’s 18-track swan song, and went on to be labelled a brilliant mess, “... balancing [Moby’s] sublime early sound with the breakbeat techno evolution of the ‘90s.” It got labeled as disposable. Its generous use of early American Blues samples from ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax’s CD box set Sounds of the South described as “...an ambivalent appropriation of the perceived features of another culture…” Pointed scorn even though Moby legally licensed the sampled material. The intervening decades since its launch still produces a clear demarcation with people: it’s an album either loved or reviled, and not much else. Ambivalence is a not word which surfaced in discussions of the album, but that wasn’t the case in 1999 before its release. Play was greeted cooly, with industry-wide indifference. Every major label shrugged at Hall’s entreaties except for one: Richard Branson’s upstart V2 label.
I have no idea why it's been so successful. All I was aiming for was record that I loved and that perhaps my friends would love."
–Richard Hall
While the album’s creative arc is tinged with a sense of minor-chord loss, it’s this nostalgia which is one of Play’s most defining and endearing qualities beyond its innate musicality. Add in the brilliant mixture and juxtaposition of traditional folk blues samples and you have a danceable balm for Y2K angst which should have resonated with the public at a frequency for success, but the album landed with a thud thanks to no airplay. V2 was lukewarm in its support, requiring Hall to mail out review copies of the album himself. The first gig booked to promote the LP was at a Virgin Megastore in Union Square. “Literally playing music while people were waiting in line buying CDs,” Hall recalled in an interview. HIs techno/dance lament seemed destined to follow his stomping ode to punk rock – 1996’s Animal Rights. – with its abysmal public reception and subsequent lack of sales.
Photo below: Part of the system setup for listening to Play: Vintage Altec 604e in 612 utlity cabinets.
Play failed to chart initially in the United States, had a tepid response in the U.K. – only reaching up to 30 on their charts – and Hall felt he had another dud on his hands. But, an interesting thing happened; the ears of the advertising sector of the music industry perked up when it came to licensing Play’s tracks for commercial use. An avenue Hall traditionally hadn’t dealt with, advertisers were now paying handsomely for his work, and more importantly to Hall, his music has finally reaching large numbers of the public. He didn’t care how people were hearing it, just that they heard it. This blueprint for bypassing radio and MTV to reach consumers worked. Within 10 months Wall took a phone call from his manager telling him Play was No.1 in the UK. Its ubiquity on television and radio advertising campaigns had turned the tide. And while it only peaked at No.38 on the US charts, sales went from 6,000 copies moved worldwide the week it debuted to 150,000-copies-a-week less then a year later. Hit single, after hit single propelled the album to move more than two million physical copies in 2000 alone.
Moby was fully immersed in the mainstream music conscious and had become synonymous not only with club culture, but with the likes of film soundtracks (The Bourne Supremacy) and advertisements (American Express, Nissan, Bosch, Maxwell House, etc.) It would go on to sell more than 12 million copies, along the way becoming the biggest-selling electronica album of all time, and earning critical praise like being ranked 341 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and best album of 1999 in the Pazz & Jop annual critic’s poll published in The Village Voice. Not a bad showing for a techno/post punk banger who was on the verge of quitting music and becoming an architect.
Photo below: The 2016 gatefold release from my collection.
My copy of Play came via Discogs, where I was able to snag the 2016 European 180-gram 2xLP which is a limited edition reissue. Listening was done via an 1963 Empire 398 turntable fitted with a Shure M44G moving magnet cartridge or an EMT HSD 006 moving coil with A23 EMT SUT (Empire sled-mounts for both cartridges). This ran into an Audio Note M3 Phono preamplifier (all valve and valve rectified), and an Oliver Sayes 45 tube power amp. Speakers were Altec 604e in original 612 cabinets (early ‘60s) fitted with Werner Jagusch crossovers. Cabling was a mix of Audio Note UK and OJAS Mogami/Belden runs. Clean power courtesy a Shindo Mr.T.
Photo below: EMT HSD 006 moving-coil cartridge mounted on an early-sixties Empire 398 turntable.
The needle drops into the groove and is rewarded with music which is fast and dynamic on this pressing, without so much as a semblance of hiss or pop. The vinyl version provides the necessary reverence – like that of a tea ceremony – for the experience of listening. Such was the dominance of digital, the release had only two LPs pressings in its initial 1999 showing (the U.S. and UK) and not another until 17 years later, and that for European distribution. The first several cuts on the album seem designed to maximize the ethno-cultural samples integration with all the layered synth, drums, multi-track loops and slide guitar washing – somber tone colours – that Moby painted the album with. It’s as if he’s paying homage to the authenticity of the Lomax samples.
The opening cut, “Honey”, immediately pulls you in with it’s addictive, looping chorus, pounding piano work, deep percussive cadence, plunging bass line, and string arrangements – it’s impossible to not tap your toes or head bob as the track alternately rises and falls in synch to the ethno-vocal samples lament. Did I feel like I was transported back in time when the needle hit the groove? Yes. It was like seeing an old friend with whom the years stretched too long in between seeing one another. “Find My Baby” and “Porcelain” continue the rush of memories, many of playing this CD back in the day at concert-level volume wherever I was: Home, wearing headphones, in the car, at parties, the album was ubiquitous at the time. “South Side” maintains the push and pull balance of atmospheric synth washes, ethereal vocal backgrounds and chill out keyboard as a call-and-respond kind of cadence to the track layout. “Bodyrock” slams with its pervasive bass line proving the title aptly named. “Machete” keeps the electronic dance vibe rock steady with Hall’s screaming vocals front and centre providing a vent for the pent-up energy of the track. “Run On” is a dance floor stalwart from the turn of the century and Hall’s modern overdubbed vocal track binds the gospel samples with intertwined bass and drum keeping tempo within the eclectic mix. I could go on, but I think the thrust of the album is laid bare in every cut: it’s meant to evoke a higher plane of consciousness within the listener.
Photos below: Right – Audio Note UK M3 Phono preamplifier. Left – the naked vinyl awaits a spin.
Play is an album of revelation, not ignorance or redaction, it is in its very essence celebratory, inclusive and conceptual. Listening to it is a cathartic experience and one of time travel as it encapsulates so much of the culture we were experiencing at the end of the 20th century and the birth of the 21st. It is multilayered and complex in its material with a distinctive musical signature mining a celebratory melancholy. Every song destined to support the narrative arc of the album: Thematically it has a unity of mood and purpose - to make us want to move. What more could you ask from an album built with the foundation of beats, rhythms and percussion designed for the dance floor?
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