MOBY + MAX COOPER + LOGIC1000 + SWIM + PLANNINGTOROCK + MIGGS B2B CARTER – ‘ON THE BEACH’, BRIGHTON BEACH 26.7.26
In the mid-90s, genres like grunge and Britpop dominated British radio. With Oasis flying the flag of lad culture, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were for anyone angry and distrustful of the ‘system.’ By the turn of the millennium, the bubbling undercurrent of rave culture started to hit the mainstream as guitar music died down. The likes of Fatboy Slim’s ‘You’ve Come A Long Way Baby’ and Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ became ubiquitous in English culture — built in field raves and clubs like Sterns. However, it wasn’t until MOBY released ‘Play’ that electronic felt truly international.
The release of the sample-heavy, euphoric ‘Play’ changed everything, licensing nearly every track for commercial use, effectively ending the gatekeeping ‘credibility’ of rock’s rules and ushering in a new age of sync deals. Beyond this, ‘Play’ is a downtempo record built for the small hours of the rave. Without his decision, dance culture may never have become the juggernaut it is today – his legacy is foundational to ‘On The Beach’. Cutting his teeth at the old Brighton Zap Club, Moby’s headline on a day of minimal electronica feels like a celebration of an underrated legacy in one of the first places to embrace what he was doing.
Across nearly seven hours of support, the sets are non-stop, transitioning seamlessly. Opening with an hour and a half of minimal house in a b2b from Miggs and Carter, their set is built on lo-fi beats, with most tracks leaning ambient, relying on warm rollers to get the beach two-stepping.
Gradually building up to funkier, thick basslines for their conclusion, Miggs and Carter’s b2b does what is expected: soundtrack people’s entry to the beach.
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Segueing straight into the next set, Planningtorock’s set with live vocals amps up the momentum while overtly leaning into dance music’s politics. A techno-verging-on-trance mix of Bowie’s “‘Heroes’” opens things up, with a slight hiccup as the sound cuts entirely for a minute or two.
As a trans and non-binary DJ, Planningtorock’s slot comes at the right time given the current politicisation of the LGBTQIA+ community – even airing ‘This Is Manchester (House Mix)’, a remix of a speech given by The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer. Leaning firmly into Chicago House, with stabbing piano cutting through the beats, Planningtorock’s set feels rooted in the lineage of dancefloors as a safe space, despite the billed live vocals rarely appearing.
However, they land for ‘Get Your Fckin Laws Off My Body’ – a trance response to the UK government’s failure to ban conversion therapy. With crowd pleasers also aired in Max Dean’s ‘Reckless 3’ and Inner City’s ‘Good Life 2011’ bringing a synth-heavy feel, Planningtorock’s set is a powerful reminder of the current state of the UK via the political medium of dance.
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After Planningtorock’s righteous anger, Swim’s DJ set feels entirely different: it is pure crowdpleasing. Opening on a remix of General Levy’s ‘Incredible’ that drops into a techno hardgroove, before the horn burst of ‘It Just Won’t Do’ cuts in for a high-energy remix.
While the crowd’s attention is grabbed in two tracks, Underworld’s ‘Two Months Off’ – with its uplifting vocal “You bring light in”’- pushes the continuous tempo into restlessness with added hi-hats and kick drums. From this point, the crowd is won over, and the humble two-step suddenly has shoulders moving in the mix with hardgroove keeping the tempo up across his hour.
Seemingly tracking the lineage of House, Swim is locked in; barely looking up from his decks as the upbeat atmosphere of Roger Sanchez’s ‘Another Chance’ segues into Sammy Virji’s garage-bounce ‘If U Need It’. While Planningtorock’s hour was a necessity, Swim brought a needed burst of fan-service to kick off the final run of supports.
With a return to the minimal House of the opening b2b, Logic1000’s set feels like a misstep. As the last ticket-holders make their way into the arena, the set feels more like background noise to conversation than anything as impactful as our prior two sets.
With needle-drops for Make A Dance’s ‘Young Man’ slowly breaking into acid-house with a Moby-style blues sample, there’s a feeling her set is here to bridge the gap between the crowd-pleasing and the slower tempo of tonight’s headline.
Dropping her own tracks with the likes of ‘What You Like’, the minimal synths float through while a sub-bass fills the speakers. Regardless of the step-down in pace, Logic1000’s set is hypnotic enough to get your feet moving without you realising it.
As the final support before Moby, Max Cooper’s typical audio-visual set gains a lot of buzz in the crowd – with many in attendance here likely at his acclaimed 2024 show at The Old Market.
Moving from glitchy ambience to slow-building synth-based techno, Cooper’s visuals seem like a psychedelic-lensed evolution – with cells constantly breaking and multiplying. While the slower pace of Logic1000’s prior set seemingly foreshadows Cooper’s, his set ramps into breakbeat and dark rollers as it progresses.
Visually, there’s a sense of urban paranoia, with aerial shots of towns, cities, and factories, and Vitruvian-man-adjacent sketches paired with endless WhatsApp messages. Moving blisteringly through a final act including a drop of Sasha’s racing synth classic ‘Xpander’, Cooper’s set is a multi-sensory experience that is somewhat diluted by the open-air setting – lacking the visuals and lasers of his own intimate, indoor sets.
Ultimately, his hour feels slightly hampered by the fact he’s having to raise the energy for the headliner rather than focus on his own tracks.
With 7 members arriving on stage, the full-band Moby experience bursts into life as he runs out, hammering punk riffs on guitar for ‘Bodyrock’ – transforming the track into glitchy dance-rock with a strings section. “This may be a strange thing for a narcissist to say, but turn and look at the sunset” beams Moby in his first words of the night.
“I remember playing this song for the first time round the corner”, he states, introducing the Badalamenti-sampling breakthrough of ‘Go ’-moving the energy from rock to rave, with his frantic conga drumming meeting the strings.
Shockingly energetic for a man in his 60s, Moby sprints up and down the stage invigorated by the full-band reworking of his classics. With the infamous Eminem lyric “Moby nobody listens to techno” chopped and flipped for a remix of ‘Next Is The E’, the glitching breakbeat erupts the audience – transporting us back to a mid-90s Zap night. The positivity in the crowd is bountiful – not content to peak early, the gospel ambience of ‘In This World’ and ‘In My Heart’ showcases the range of touring vocalists Nadia Duggin and India Carney.
An obligatory slower section continues with ‘We Are All Made Of Stars’, allowing Moby to drive the rhythm on guitar, while also carrying the vocals of a pulsating space-age track. In a heartwarming moment, Moby’s militant vegan message is delivered via a pre-recorded video from the dearly departed Jane Goodall, urging the crowd to “Empty the cages and move towards a plant-based diet.”
“Can I tell a story?” Moby asks, “I got my first job at 10 to buy David Bowie records. We later became neighbours… he came to my apartment once, and we played this song acoustic. The most beautiful song ever” before a stirringly minimalist ‘“Heroes”’ is aired. For a man with “animal rights” tattooed on his arms, this is entirely expected, but it does push his set slightly into a preaching PETA advert, especially when visuals of farm animals are on screen for the emotive ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad.’
With the slower, campaigning section out the way, Moby is free to return to the rave – allowing the crowd back onto the dancefloor once they’ve had time to think. While ‘Find My Baby’ feels closer to blues-rock than rave, ‘Lift Me Up’ is a joyous rave-punk stomper that raises heart rates. With permission granted to return to hedonism, the staccatoed strings of ‘Extreme Ways’ meet driving percussion for lyrics of “oh baby/then it fell apart”, bringing the main set to a sombre close.
“We’re going to have a test. A 15,000-person focus group,” Moby announces, “When the music comes in, if you like this next song, hold up a phone with a flashlight. If you don’t, buy something on Temu.” Kicking off the encore, the floating sadness of ‘Porcelain’ creates a sea of stars in iPhone flashlights, with downtempo breakbeats and looping light piano meeting Moby’s vocals of “In my dreams I’m dying.”
Despite the typical approach of ending on your biggest track, Moby keeps up the outspokenness: introducing his backing band with “As residents of the United States, we’re all desperate to leave right now. If anyone wants to marry us.” Stepping into the shoes of Jacob Lusk, Nadia Duggin takes the blues vocals of ‘Natural Blues’, eschewing the moody late-night tempo of the original, in favour of an EDM lean toward the BLONDish remix.
Part live show, part protest and part autobiography, Moby leaves with one final speech: “My friend Frankie Knuckles invented House Music at The Warehouse. But you guys invented rave culture. This one goes out to the culture you invented.” Ending with an explosive moment of gospel breakbeat, ‘Feeling So Real’ caps off a day of reflection with a final dance, and a moment of honouring the UK’s impact on dance culture – a culture built on reinvention and the creation of safe spaces to move.
Moby setlist:
‘Bodyrock’
‘Go’
‘Next Is The E’
‘In This World’
‘In My Heart’
‘We Are All Made Of Stars’
“Pre-recorded Jane Goodall video”
‘“Heroes”’ (David Bowie cover)
‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?’
‘Raining Again’
‘Disco Lies’
‘Flower’/’Find My Baby’
‘Honey’
‘Lift Me Up’
‘Extreme Ways’
(encore)
‘Porcelain’
‘Natural Blues’
‘Feeling So Real’
Further reading on MOBY:
Moby was born Richard Melville Hall in Harlem, NYC in 1965. His father gave him his nickname “Moby” when he was 10 minutes old, as a result of his hereditary relationship to Herman Melville. Moby started playing classical music and studying music theory when he was 9 years old, and then came of age musically in the punk rock scene in and around NYC in the early 80’s. He released his first single, ‘Go’, in 1991 (listed as one of Rolling Stone magazine’s best records of all time), and has been making albums ever since. He has sold over 20,000,000 albums worldwide.
In addition to making his own records, Moby has also produced and remixed artists as varied and disparate as David Bowie, Public Enemy, Ozzy Osbourne, The Beastie Boys, and Daft Punk, to name a few. Moby also works with and supports a variety of non-profit organizations, including The Humane Society, Emily’s List, The ACLU, and The Institute for Music and Neurologic Function.
He has also branched out into film and television production with his company Little Walnut. In addition to their award-winning documentaries ‘Moby Doc’ and ‘Punk Rock Vegan Movie’.
Today’s ‘On The Beach’ concert is Moby’s fourth concert in Brighton, with the previous three being at The Zap Club on 29th November 1994, Concorde 2 on 1st February 2000, and the Brighton Centre on 24th November 2002. Interestingly the Concorde 2 show was the first ever concert held at the new concert venue, which is very near to the ‘On The Beach’ festival.
