Moby’s sampler unplugged

You’ve got to hand it to Moby. An artist who broke the bank in 1996 with his multi-platinum global smash, “Play,” he has since done everything he can to avoid making “Play, Again.” It’s not one of those reverse ego trips, in which an artist willfully rejects the very thing that made him massive. Moby, he insists, still abides by electronic music.

But check Moby’s background -- reared on Mozart and Schubert as a child, ex-punk rocker, house DJ, rock geek. This is a man with a short attention span.

Moby’s latest feint is “Hotel,” in which everyone’s beloved circuit-tweaker rejects samples and loops for the cheap thrills of amped-up guitars, vocals and songs about beauty, joy and the simple consolations of friendship.

“My musical background is very strange,” says Moby, who is calling from an Arizona hotel a few minutes before a sound check. He has the gentle, measured voice of an NPR host. “I’ve never had any one allegiance to any particular style, though at times I think that might be easier. You know, if a folk singer is going to make his ninth album, he doesn’t have to worry about what it sounds like.”

He’s right about his allegiances -- remember “Animal Rights”? That was his bizarre, hard-rock follow-up to his 1995 breakout techno record, “Everything Is Wrong.” Even the press release for his new album notes that he has “arguably the strangest career in contemporary music.”

The arc of that career has implausibly brought Moby, who will turn 40 on Sept. 11, to the middle of the road, and into the crosshairs of critics who are underwhelmed by “Hotel.” Fans seem noncommittal too: “Hotel” has sold just more than 100,000 copies since its March release.

With its insistent mid-tempo beats, oceanic arrangements and cosmically disembodied vocals -- both from Moby and his friend Laura Dawn -- “Hotel” is, like Moby’s last album, “18,” a move away from “Play’s” brittle techno bricolage. (As a sop to his techno loyalists, Moby has included a bonus disc of ambient remixes of “Hotel’s” songs with the new album.) The lyrics on songs like “Beautiful” and “Dream About Me” are so elemental as to be remedial, but that was the intention.

“Some of the songs are designed to be frivolous,” says the man born Richard Melville Hall. “ ‘Beautiful’ is a song about celebrity couples. I was watching a VH1 show about these couples, and it struck me how dim some of them were, but dim in a harmless way. As a punk kid, I used to think the unexamined life wasn’t worth living, but my perspective has changed. If you’re happy, more power to you!”

Mostly, “Hotel” relies on a time-worn trope -- romantic relationships and their tendency to fail. Hence, the title: a hotel being a place that you inhabit for a while and then leave.

“The last few relationships I had were very loving, but they didn’t last,” he says. “So I guess there’s a sense of longing in these songs.”

Longing, sure, but there are also euphoric chants like “Lift Me Up” and “Spiders,” perfect for arena singalongs. “ ‘Spiders’ is my tribute to David Bowie,” Moby says. “I’ve also admired how he made a virtue out of being a disenfranchised outcast. I grew up poor in a wealthy neighborhood, and the only way I ever connected to anything was through music.”

That’s why Moby likes to position himself front and center with a guitar when he’s on stage now; it’s the best way to make a connection with the audience, to step into the light and maximize his rock ‘n’ roll kicks.

“I’m under no illusions about my voice, but I enjoy singing,” he says, “and there’s something deeply satisfying about getting on stage with a guitar and singing.... Like guns and fast cars, you feel a tremendous amount of power when you play a guitar.”

He has the guitar, yes, but still no studio band. He recorded everything on “Hotel” himself (except the drums) in his apartment studio and mixed the record about two blocks away. His vegan food and tea emporium, Teany, is about a five-block walk. “I was an only child, and I’ve always lived and worked alone,” he says. “It’s a lot easier for me to work in a solipsistic fashion. I’m an extremely provincial guy. I’ve lived in downtown Manhattan for so long that I’m thinking about moving elsewhere. Amsterdam, perhaps.”

*

Moby

Where: The Wiltern LG, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $35

Info: (213) 380-5005