You have to give Moby credit.
     It’s 6:30 a.m. in Australia when he answers the phone. Though he admits to being "a little bit tired," his thoughts are clear and well considered.
     He is focused at an hour that most of us would be struggling just to keep our eyes open. It’s not unlike his approach to his passion: music.
     He is an intriguing man, an intriguing artist, this great-great-grandnephew of Moby Dick author Herman Melville.
     Born Richard Melville Hall 36 years ago, Moby in a sense is going after his own "great whale," driven deep inside to try to catch the ever illusive, ever changing goals of artistic satisfaction.
     So, who is he? House innovator, techno-punk originator, thrash-metal rocker, inadvertent soundtracker, composer?
     Hailed as a leader in the electronic music revolution, Moby downplays any suggestions of being at the forefront of anything. "If I ever make music that’s experimental or pioneering or avant-garde, it’s completely by accident. All I strive to do is make music I love." That’s a sentiment that he weaves through this interview to make a point.
     If you look at the history of popular music, he suggests, a lot of the innovations and development happened completely by accident. "Look at Elvis Presley as an example, or the people who invented rock and roll. They weren’t sitting down in an academic institution thinking about how to create something new. It came from their love of African-American music and traditional music and country-and-western."
     Though on Play, his album before his new 18 CD, he served as a bridge between musical generations, sampling on one track the recordings of folk music historian Alan Lomax from the early 20th century, Moby does not see himself as an educator either.
     "The only agenda I have in doing that is to make music people love. When I use an old Alan Lomax recording, it’s not because it was recorded a long time ago. It’s because it’s a remarkable, beautiful, passionate, vocal performance. It could have been made five years or 10 minutes ago. I would have loved it just as much. If it is broadening people’s musical horizons, it’s nice, but it’s accidental."
     Raised in Connecticut, this New York native’s father died when he was 2. A mother who encouraged his creative explorations raised him. At 10, he was studying classical guitar and eventually expanded his interests to the punk movement, playing with a variety of bands.
     In the late 1980s, he gravitated to the house music scene. His early singles were well known on the rave scene, with "Go" selling more than a million copies in the United Kingdom. "Go" was included in Rolling Stone’s Top 200 Records of All Time listing.
     Everything is Wrong became his first album, making Spin magazine’s list of Best 20 albums of 1995. It offered a hybrid of house, rock, hardcore, thrash and jungle.
     He was featured on the 1995 Lollapallooza tour, spotlighting his hardcore thrash punk. He returned in 1996 with the Animal Rights album, a collection of industrial punk, speedcore and instrumentals.
     He released I Like To Score in 1997, a compilation of his many tracks used in movies, including his breakbeat-driven version of the "James Bond Theme," which reached No. 8 on the U.K. charts. It hinted at his newfound love of hip-hop, a genre he further explored in Play.
     People magazine muses that he may be the first techno artist to openly court a mainstream audience, and paints this description: "An enthusiastic Christian and strict environmentalist, Moby also avoids alcohol, drugs and all animal products. But as a musician he is a hedonist, indulging his every creative whim."
The question begs to be asked again: So, who is he?
     "There is some confusion regarding the public perception of me. It depends on who you ask," he says. "I’ve been making records a long time, many different types. I think some see me as a composer or a musician, a DJ, a punk rocker, a sound artist. I’d like to be thought of as someone who makes music that people like."
     One of the things that he loves about making records is the fact they are a portable medium, he says. "The work I make at home in my bedroom can reach people in a very, very intimate way: when they are getting ready to go to sleep, making dinner or going on a long car trip. It thrills me being able to interact with people, to some extent provide a soundtrack for people’s daily lives. That’s more than I ever expected."
     He wrote an article for Time magazine looking into the future of technology, and he asked: "If we all become drive-time Puff Daddies, sampling and re-creating music (even in our cars) according to our personal taste, are we the composer or the listener?
     Is there an answer?
     "From my perspective, I studied classical music when I was young, played jazz fusion, studied music theory throughout my life and I always had teachers or friends employing very arbitrary criteria for judging music: by where it comes from, what medium, who is making it," he responds. "The only thing that matters, the only way to judge, is what your emotional reaction to a piece of music is."
     From that perspective, he adds, it doesn’t matter how or where it’s made or who is making it. "It’s your subjective reaction to the music you are listening to."
     An artist who is embraced internationally, Moby has some interesting observations on how his music is received outside of the United States. "It’s a strange thing. Like all my records [most or all of which he has made in his bedroom], I didn’t expect them to be at all successful, let alone Platinum or Gold in 15 different countries, or No. 1 in a lot of countries."
     He says he doesn’t see the national character of a place influencing the way people respond to him. "But the American pop charts are so abysmal. As much as I consider myself in certain ways proud to be an American, looking at the Top 40 makes me ashamed of my national background."
     He says he is not certain why his music resonates for people. "I still can’t figure it out, except on the most basic levels if I use myself as a test subject.
     "I like it because it is emotional and diverse and eclectic, and it’s a record that wasn’t made for marketing reasons, but purely for love of music. The vast majority of records released in the U.S., and which do well, are made specifically to sell well. They are not made for any great love of music. A lot of records that get released are very formulaic and stick to a very rigid genre. There are artists like me whose music maybe is a little messier and eclectic."
     Moby takes that approach to the concert stage.
     "I make the records by myself, sitting alone in my bedroom: writing, recording and producing and doing the engineering. When I’m onstage, it’s with a full band. Depending on the song, up to seven people are with us. I get bored at other people’s concerts very easily. My goal is to present something that nobody would be bored by.
     "The concert we put on is at times passionate and dynamic, quiet and delicate, bombastic and loud. A lot of time and money was spent in putting together a remarkable production."
     Being onstage allows him to do things he wouldn’t be able to do just walking down the street, he says. "I stand onstage and run around and scream at the top of my lungs and throw myself into the audience. I’d get arrested if I did that on the street."
     Moby is grateful for his audience. "I’m very fortunate that the people who buy my records tend to be people who I want to be friends with," he explains. "When I meet Moby fans, they are smart and open-minded and naturally aware. I’m very grateful for that. I can’t imagine being in a disposable pop group playing music before people you don’t respect."