A few weeks ago, I had planned on doing a full, start-to-finish deep dive into Moby — the kind of show where you pull everything off the shelf, line the records up in order, and let an artist’s entire evolution play out in real time. Then reality intervened. I couldn’t find the pile of Moby records. I knew they were here somewhere, but until recently they stayed buried just out of reach.

When I finally dug them up, it became obvious almost immediately that this wasn’t going to work as a single episode. What I have in front of me spans nearly two decades — from 1992 through 2011 — and that kind of catalog doesn’t deserve to be rushed. There’s too much ground to cover, too many sharp turns, too many moments where Moby deliberately burned bridges behind him and rebuilt himself from scratch.

So this is Part One of a much larger project.

Moby’s story starts in a place a lot of people forget: the American underground. Before global success, before licensing deals, before Play became unavoidable, he was a fixture in early ’90s rave culture, punk scenes, and DIY spaces. He came up influenced as much by hardcore and post-punk as by techno and house, and that tension — between aggression and calm, movement and stillness — never really left his work.

His self-titled debut Moby (1992) captures that collision perfectly: club-ready tracks like “Go” and “Drop a Beat” sitting alongside stranger, moodier material. With Ambient (1993), he took a hard left turn, stripping things down into long, drifting pieces that felt almost devotional in tone. This wasn’t background music — it was emotional space. Quiet, patient, and deeply personal.

By the time Everything Is Wrong arrived in 1995, those two worlds fully collided. Big beats, melancholy melodies, spiritual undercurrents, and moments of near silence all coexist on the same record. It’s messy in the best possible way — an artist trying to reconcile who he was with who he was becoming. And then Animal Rights (1996) came along and confused nearly everyone, pulling punk, noise, and hardcore back to the surface just as audiences thought they had him figured out. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. Moby has never stayed where people expect him to.

We did play Play in full a few weeks back, and that album absolutely deserves the attention it gets. But if I didn’t place it properly into this larger arc, something wouldn’t feel right. Play doesn’t exist in a vacuum — it only works because of everything that came before it. So as we move through these shows, Play will appear exactly where it belongs in the timeline, not as a detour, but as a destination that had to be earned.

This episode is about laying the groundwork — the early years, the risks, the experiments, the moments of beauty that often get overshadowed by later success. After this, we’ll switch things up for a bit, then come back for Part Two. We’ll do it again for Part Three. That’s intentional.

This is also part of a broader shift for Rolling with Scissors going into 2026. We’re leaning hard into true, large-scale deep dives — not just highlights, not just greatest hits, but full-context explorations of artists who matter. The kind of shows that take time, patience, and trust in the listener.

This is the first of those.

And it felt right to start here.

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Hour 1

Artist – Song – Time – Album – Label – Year

Moby – Drop A Beat – 04:20 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Everything – 04:52 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Yeah – 05:48 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Electricity – 03:29 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Next Is The E – 04:42 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Mercy – 05:44 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Go – 03:37 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Help Me To Believe – 06:32 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Have You Seen My Baby – 04:09 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Ah Ah – 03:46 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Slight Return – 04:29 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Moby – Stream – 03:09 – Moby – Instinct Records – 1992

Hour 2

Artist – Song – Time – Album – Label – Year

Moby – My Beautiful Blue Sky – 05:19 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Heaven – 08:16 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Tongues – 05:37 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – J Breas – 02:47 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Myopia – 04:46 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – House Of Blue Leaves – 06:20 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Bad Days – 02:27 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Piano & String – 01:35 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Sound – 01:11 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Dog – 07:35 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – 80 – 02:06 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Lean On Me – 03:51 – Ambient – Instinct Records – 1993

Moby – Hymn – 03:17 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Feeling So Real – 03:21 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – All That I Need Is To Be Loved – 02:43 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Let’s Go Free – 00:38 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Everytime You Touch Me – 03:41 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Bring Back My Happiness – 03:12 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Hour 3

Artist – Song – Time – Album – Label – Year

Moby – What Love – 02:48 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – First Cool Hive – 05:17 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Into The Blue – 05:33 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Anthem – 03:27 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Everything Is Wrong – 01:14 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters – 07:21 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – When It’s Cold I’d Like To Die – 04:14 – Everything Is Wrong – Mute – 1995

Moby – Now I Let It Go – 02:08 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Come On Baby – 04:40 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Someone To Love – 02:51 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Heavy Flow – 01:54 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – You – 02:32 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – My Love Will Never Die – 04:32 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Soft – 03:57 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Say It’s All Mine – 06:06 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – That’s When I Reach For My Revolver – 03:57 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Face It – 10:03 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Living – 07:00 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996

Moby – Love Song For My Mom – 03:40 – Animal Rights – Mute – 1996 [fade out]

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Rolling with Scissors airs live every Tuesday from 2–5 AM on 89.9 FM in Madison and streams at wortfm.org. Missed it? You can catch the episode for two weeks after broadcast at archive.wortfm.org or at rwsradio.com.

While the audio disappears after two weeks, the episode notes and playlists don’t. Every deep dive, rant, and full album breakdown stays right here — so you can revisit the details any time.

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