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Any remix album should come with a warning, as far too often what should be some sort of creative venture, a regeneration of the original material, becomes a stop gap for artists when the creative well runs dry.
Happily that's never been the case for Moby, for he has actively sought remixes of his own music as a way not just of presenting his own work in a different light, but of nurturing new talent. As long ago as 1995 he showed an initiative rare at the time in a mixed compilation of remixes. So it is that just six months on from its release, Last Night gets a good going over.
Even then it's hard to suppress a certain amount of scepticism for the project, coming so soon on the back of the album and in time for Christmas, but all that is swept away as Holy Ghost begin the assault on the dancefloor. As this is a mixed album - in terms of being segued rather than varying in quality - it's so well guaged and blended that it's fair to assume Moby himself is at the controls.
It doesn't even matter that there are three versions of I Love To Move In Here, or two each of Ooh Yeah, I'm In Love, Disco Lies and Alice. For the chosen knob twiddlers are sufficiently different in style to make this something of a journey. A punchy opening half hour brings solid contributions from the more popular side in the form of Freemasons, Shapeshifters and Seamus Haji, all with perfectly aligned tracks to get any self respecting night up and running, and in the case of the Shapeshifters recreating the whoosh of sound heard behind the Woodtick version of Go.
This branches out into heavier beats and less of an emphasis on the first beat, with General Midi, D Ramirez and Style Of Eye in particular excelling. The result being that Moby's originals really start to rock, fulfilling the promise laid down by the urgent rapping of Live For Tomorrow, given a beefy drum track from Tocadisco. Winding down with the album version of Last Night is a nice touch with which to finish, effectively Moby's seal of approval for the project.
Last Night was heralded as Moby's return to the dancefloor - so it seems only right to have given it another polish, letting the remixers crank it up a notch further for peak time clubbers. It comes as something of a surprise to be recommending a remix album of one artist - and reflects well on Moby that the mix is such a success.
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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees
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