Moby

• Year: 2002
• Rating: 6/10
• Cat. No: 2561202

Track listing:

1. We Are All Made Of Stars
2. In This World
3. In My Heart
4. Great Escape
5. Signs Of Love
6. One Of These Mornings
7. Another Woman
8. Fireworks
9. Extreme Ways
10. Jam For The Ladies
11. Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday)
12. 18
13. Sleep Alone
14. At Least We Tried
15. Harbour
16. Look Back In
17. The Rafters
18. I’m Not Worried At All

Play, released in 1999, eventually conquered the globe a year later and became a ubiquitous soundtrack for the turn of the Millennium. At times, 18 blurs the distinction between follow-up and facsimile.

It’s disappointing that, on many tracks, Moby has simply reprised the Play formula of supplanting old bluesy vocal samples onto his now-trademark gospel flavoured ambient dance beats. First time around, it had an intoxicating appeal, but on 18 it just sounds lazy.

If it ain’t broke, dont fix it?… perhaps. Yet apparently more than one hundred tracks were demoed for the album, so the preference for selecting what are effectively xeroxes of the standouts from Play is all the more mysterious…

The sequencing, too, places the more adventurous moments towards the end, which has the upside of making 18’s second half far more interesting and enjoyable than its first.. in direct contrast to most 70-minute albums.

Tellingly, We Are All Made Of Stars, Extreme Ways (both featuring Moby’s own vocals) and the pair of Sinead O’Connor collaborations prove the most rewarding listens, forsaking the cookie-cutter mentality elsewhere which renders at least 50% of 18 little more than Play Revisited.

Undemanding stuff, then… but Play’s extraordinary success has guaranteed a willing audience for this sequel.