*** Moby

I LIKE TO SCORE: MUSIC FROM FILMS VOL. 1

(Elektra)

Moby is techno's sensible son, from the pragmatic decision to limit his political discourses to the liner notes of his albums on up to his practical, no-fuss haircut. More recently, he's divided his time between wooing a mainstream audience with the guitar-bass-and-drums-oriented rock of Animal Rights (Elektra) and practicing his art as a techno studio wiz in remixes and soundtracks.

I Like To Score, which does offer another one of Moby's written mini-manifestos (this one deals with capitalism's moral crisis), is basically his way of saying that if it looks, sounds, and feels like soundtrack music, well, then, might as well treat it as soundtrack music -- i.e., use it in films. And like so much contemporary electronica, Moby's sleek instrumental techno tracks are ideally suited for such a task (which is more than just a nice way of saying they don't necessarily hold up on their own). His tendency to dabble in various genres -- a benign symptom of obsessive sampling -- serves him well in the celluloid world: he does everything from ambient synth washes ("Novio," from Double Tap) and symphonic piano etudes ("God Moving over the Face of the Waters," from Heat), to high-energy house grooves ("Go," from Twin Peaks) and melancholy ballads ("Love Theme," from Joe's Apartment). And, sensible boy that he is, there's just enough rockist guitar here -- in the technofied "James Bond Theme" and his radical remix of Joy Division's "New Dawn Fades" -- to appeal to modern rockers.

-- Matt Ashare