Sometimes working with someone else’s music sparks new ideas of your own. For a while, The Noise Room used Blend, an online platform where producers shared source project files, including Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic, GarageBand, Maschine, and Reason projects, so other musicians could remix, learn from, and build on each other’s work. Moby shared a number of songs there to tweak, including “The Perfect Life” from his album Innocents, which features vocals from Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. Project files for Moby’s single “The Last Day,” from the same album, were also made available exclusively through Blend, formatted for use in both Ableton Live and Pro Tools.
Blend has since closed. The service was later acquired by the instrument maker ROLI before shutting down, and the project files described here are no longer accessible through it.
Moby remains one of electronic music’s most enduring figures, staying inventive through changing trends for decades. That same restless streak led him to open “The Last Day” up to outside producers on Blend, an early example of an artist inviting listeners to work directly inside a track’s individual parts rather than simply hear the finished version.
Innocents was recorded largely in Moby’s home studio and produced with Mark “Spike” Stent, whose credits include Muse, Björk, and Massive Attack. Rather than making the record entirely on his own, Moby brought in an extended cast of collaborators, and Innocents features guest vocalists on seven of its twelve tracks, among them Wayne Coyne, Mark Lanegan, Damien Jurado, Skylar Grey, Inyang Bassey, and Cold Specks. Moby has described the album as a departure from his usual solitary process, built around outside voices rather than made alone, which fits with his decision to hand “The Last Day” over to Blend’s community of producers to rework.
The project files are no longer available now that Blend has closed, but Innocents remains part of Moby’s catalog and can still be found through his own official channels.
