Why Moby is working with a Russian teen — Music brings us together

Times

5 days ago

Over a four-decade career in which he took ambient music and sampling to the mainstream, at one point seemingly soundtracking every advert on television, Moby has worked with the bona fide greats. 'Ridiculously well-known people, like Ozzy Osbourne, Britney Spears and Michael Jackson,' the DJ, producer, songwriter and professional vegan says — and that's without mentioning his friend David Bowie.
Next up? Dmitry Volynkin. Dmitry who? Also known as Øneheart, the Russian producer has just turned 19, and already has a song, Snowfall, with 970 million Spotify streams — making it perhaps the most successful ambient track to date. The kid was born seven years after the release of Moby's behemoth album, Play. Moby is 59. They are an unlikely pairing, yet this week are releasing a single, Lagrange Point — a gorgeous swell of synth that also features a musician called Leadwave, aka Volynkin's dad.
To find out how this happened I jump on a Zoom call with Moby and Volynkin. It is audio only: Moby says that, after he watched the first series of the tech thriller Mr Robot (2015), he disabled his cameras and I don't think he's joking.
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'It is nice meet you,' Volynkin says to Moby.
'Nice to meet you too,' Moby replies. Hang on — you have made a song together, but not met? 'No, but there are thousands of miles between us, not to mention 10 time zones,' says Moby, who lives in Los Angeles, while Volynkin is in Moscow. 'So there has just been a lot of file sharing.'
Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and tensions between Trump and Putin, it is a tricky time for a Russian to collaborate with an American. Russian artists such as the opera star Anna Netrebko have been banned from performing in the US, while its musicians have been excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest. Russian artists who oppose the war have been exiled by Putin, while Spotify has removed pro-war Russian artists from its platform.
Moby is happy to explain why he is reaching out across the divide. 'I don't want to be in any way glib or dismissive,' he begins, 'but politics are not people. I have toured for years, going from Lebanon to Israel, and guess what? The people generally do the same thing. They're having meals, going to work and sleeping and stressing about their health. They don't have the time to hate. Geopolitical divisions in no way reflect the reality of most lives.
'And for the most part, politicians just make things worse. In terms of AI, looking at the current state of politics, I almost feel we'd be better off with robot politicians, especially in the United States. So Americans are not Trump, Russians are not Putin, Israelis are not Netanyahu. Politicians are not people — they are pernicious, corrupting anomalies, and music reminds people globally that we are not reflected by them.'
Volynkin, understandably, is rather less vocal. After all, he lives in a country at war. 'Well, there are always some problems,' he says. 'But I prefer to think we are just all here for the music. Since I started growing a fanbase, I've been getting hate when people realise where I am from and that's really a hard topic for me to discuss. Politics is for politicians. I'm just making music.'
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Lagrange Point, which also features the Russian ambient artists Dean Korso and Reidenshi, came about when Volynkin and his father were fiddling about on tracks, the old man sharing his Moby vinyl collection. His son asked: 'What if we reached out to Moby?'
That, in itself, is not so strange, but why did Moby say yes? 'I was in LA and the [radio] station KCRW was playing Snowfall,' he says. 'It took me aback. Where are the drums? Where are the vocals? But, clearly, it's a beautiful piece of music, and afterwards the DJ talked about the phenomenon, and how it found this bafflingly huge audience. It's probably the only time in the history of KCRW that they have played quiet, ambient music at two in the afternoon.'
Yet as lush as Snowfall is, it is pretty weird, I say, that it has reached such a global audience. That number of streams is Lady Gaga and Beyoncé territory, not that of some Russian teenager.
'But it's the idea of music as refuge,' Moby says. 'We live in a world with a constant onslaught of demanding data and information, two-minute-long songs as loud as they can be. It's almost like if you want to get people's attention, you should do the opposite. Instead of shoving it down throats, be quiet instead. Humans are stressed and scared, and need that moment of calm.'
Moby says the real boon of Snowfall is that it is a hit that no algorithm could have predicted. 'Look, AI is pretty good at convention,' he says. 'At looking at pop music and deconstructing it. But the history of music is full of counterintuitive surprise and if, a couple of years ago, you'd given a prompt to some magical AI songwriting platform and said, 'OK, generate a piece of music that, in the current musical climate, is going to generate a billion streams' — well, it would not have created a delicate piece of ambient music. AI is good at taking one plus one and getting two, whereas humans take one plus one and get 15 million. The end result is so much more than the sum of its parts.'
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Volynkin was born in the small town of Kirsanov and remembers, at just six, listening to Russian rock music with his father. Then he discovered electronic music and installed software to make it on his grandfather's computer. 'I was experimenting, starting from dubstep and house,' he says. He uses ChatGPT to help him to write Instagram posts, but when it comes to music, he stays away from the available tools. 'We've all heard of this AI band, the Velvet Sundown,' he says, 'who are growing really fast. It sounds horrible.'
And how much of Volynkin's mother country seeps into his gorgeous, highly emotive soundscapes? 'In Russia, there are a lot of people who make sad songs,' he says, adding that he wants to focus on beauty.
Assuming the Moby single brings Volynkin an even larger audience, who would he pick to collaborate with next? 'Charli XCX,' he says. 'I fell in love with Brat and her discography is amazing.' I wouldn't rule it out.