Soundtrack to a Startup, Track 1: Living
This post is the first in a series spread out over… well, let’s just take it one post at a time.
Back before Moby’s (wonderfully creative) breakthrough mainstream hit Play, and long before his subsequent albums calcified into mostly blandness, he wrote some of the most deeply felt, minimal songs you can find under the (broad, vague) label of “electronic”. Many were vocal, many can be classified as “dance”, but some of his most powerful works are simple, relaxed, lush instrumental tracks.
So it is with Living (which, if you don’t have any early Moby, I recommend picking up as part of the compilation MobySongs, which has a number of other breathtaking pieces). No matter how many times I hear it, the deceptively relaxed piece hits me in the gut by the end.
From its first notes, Living jumps directly into a simple melody: a straightforward theme on guitar, backed by quiet strings and a consistent snare-and-bass drum backbone. The melody very gradually builds, is embellished with plenty of small flourishes and wandering harmonies, becomes gradually more exuberant and rich, but still maintains the theme introduced in the first bars. It builds for a full seven minutes, in a constant crescendo.
Without warning, at the 7:00 mark, it starts to cut out as though a wire has come loose. By 7:01 it is over, and the next song has begun.
If the mortality illustrated so effectively in this song is not one of the most primal motivations to stop coasting and create something important — for instance, a startup — I don’t know what is.