You have to feel con of sympathy for Richard Hall. The man they call Moby (so-called as the great-great-great grandnephew of Herman Melville, which may or may not be true) has had to shelter from a shower of uninformed comments about his character and his career. A disparity of stereotypes follows him around - due to his astringent tendency to alter people's perceptions of him.
Just when you think he's a hardcore punk musician (1996's Animal Rights is, unfortunately, Nine Inch Nails cranked up to 11) he releases Play, one of last year's most affecting records and the one to give the small-framed 35-year-old New York-born musician a crossover appeal he never thought he would have.
"People have this idea of me being as an ascetic, monk-like Christian in my cloister transcribing manuscripts. Or a techno guy, an environmentalist or a heavy metal musician. I never really understand which stereotype - or what melange of stereotypes - people have of me.
"Some people, luckily, are quite accepting of me, my eclecticism and my idiosyncrasies. Other people find me quite off-putting. That's one reason why in Britain and Ireland the record took quite a while for it to do well. Most people assumed it was a record they weren't going to like. A lot of people were genuinely surprised to find out that I had made a record that gave them pleasure."
A vegan and a deeply spiritual man ("I love Christ and the teachings of Christ, but I don't think of myself as a Christian"), Moby was raised in Darien, Connecticut, a fatherless, self-confessed inadequate child who felt he didn't belong. His musical training encapsulates the word idiosyncratic: jazz fusion, classical guitar, speed metal, DJing, indie pop, ambient dance and hardcore. Committing to a constant crash course of varying musical styles, with Play, Moby has created yet another niche market: the kind who like raw blues (sampled from archive recordings compiled by folk historian Alan Lomax), hip hop and simplified but sublime analogue piano chords. At over a million sales to date, Moby still can't figure out if he's a chart success due to a clerical error.
"I keep waiting for the phone call where someone says they made a mistake with the decimal point," he says from his hotel bedroom in New York, still in his pyjamas and awaiting his breakfast of juice and bananas. "Part of it is because I can't conceive that people are listening to music I've made when I'm not there. The idea of someone putting on a record I've made and having an emotional experience with it when I'm not there to experience it or observe it is an interesting one.
"I love the idea that in an area where so much music is created very cynically - created specifically to feed a marketplace, or a niche in the marketplace - that Play is quite organic. It was made by myself in my bedroom, with no huge marketing push and with no cute boy or girl band angle attached to it. It's so left-field. Compare it with Britney Spears or The Backstreet Boys. If you look at the current pop climate, there doesn't seem much room for a record like it. That makes its success all the more great. It's become successful based more on word of mouth than anything else. Perhaps people from different record companies could learn a lesson from it, that if you make a record that is emotional and inviting then people are hopefully going to like it."
With a degree of success and a bucket load of second-guessing, Moby (as an ironic, cerebral kinda guy) is gently amused that he is asked questions about specific areas of his life, despite his no-off-limits interview stance. He is doubly suspicious of people whom he regards as being somewhat fixated on specific areas of his life such as his religious leanings, his diet and his environmental concerns.
"Essentially my understanding of the world is that it's a very ambiguous place. In some interviews people want me to nail down what my beliefs are at that time and make the assumption that my beliefs will always be the same. But they change - my understanding of the world right now is quite different to what it was last year, and quite different to what it was 10 years ago. I imagine my beliefs now will be quite different to what my beliefs will be in 10 years' time. I try to be open-minded and see things for what they are. Thank goodness we live in a complicated world so there are lots of interesting things to look at and lots of interesting ways to perceive things. I never think I'm right. I just think I perceive things in a given way specific to circumstance and context."
In the past, Moby has spoken quite openly about relationships. Recently, he said, he realised the unpleasantness of being alone was a lot better than feeling uncomfortable in a long-term relationship. Whatever way you think of it, such a statement is at very least admirably self-confessional. Yet Play, with its warm, fluid mixture of blues and ambient, is a considerably emotional record. What gives?
"If I was involved in a wholesome, healthy, happy relationship, I wouldn't be as compelled to make music," Moby admits. "What drives me to make music is my desire to connect with some thing or someone. If I had that consistently intimate level of connection in my life with someone, I might not need to express my longing in the music I make. If I had a choice to make? It would be hands-down to make records. At least at this point in my life. At some point in the future it might be nice to change the balance. But you know, I really like being single.
`In general - and I know this is bad grad-student philosophising - a lot of the archetypes and paradigms that have been handed down to us are being recognised as quite arbitrary, especially when it comes to romantic involvement, relationships and marriage. Institutions that made a lot of sense 100 years ago or 500 years ago really don't make a lot of sense to us now. I'm not saying that marriage and relationships should be thrown out the window. I just like to redefine things for myself and my circumstances rather than take on things that were forged in circumstances extremely different from the ones I live in."
That said, although Moby finds the notion of a long-term relationship a romantic, aspirational one, he's not so sure if it's realistic.
"Can anyone ever really experience marriage fully unless they've been divorced? Ireland has a different cultural tradition, but in America a lot of people get married with an underlying idea that they are going to get divorced. But we live in a different world now. We live in cities and by the standards of our ancestors we're extremely affluent. We have a degree of flexibility and understanding that they didn't have. We also live longer. Women especially are empowered in ways that our ancestors could never have dreamed of. In the bad old days, if a woman was 25 and hadn't hitched herself into marriage her life was over. Now, it seems that if a woman is 25 and has hitched herself into marriage, her life is over. Most women I know prize their freedom above anything. They love the idea of having a strong romantic partner or a boyfriend, but they don't want their autonomy taken away from them. That's wonderful."
Moby plays Dublin's Red Box on February 11th and 12th