5 out of 5

Label: digital self-release

Produced by: MOY

This was made out of love, and made for MOY fans; even if it’s not my go-to style – I’m not big on continuous mixes – and it’s perhaps a bit more on the “tune out and tune out” style of listening that benefits from some supplemental something or so, I have to respect this project, as well as the business model: an hour+ long customized comp of many of MOY’s works, themed around celebrating the 808; available as a limited-time digital purchase alongside some merch (or, I think, available separately for a while), but currently offered to stream only.

One thing I kind of love / hate about the digital age is the especially limited availability and the excess access to that: as a collector of physical items, when something was super rare and only available at shows or etc., it was A. an amazing find in the wild and B. easier to give myself a “pass” if I couldn’t get it – I can’t go to that show or shop in France or the UK, etc. But with limited quantities sold online, the ability to nab it is determined by how close to your keyboard you are when a social media post goes up or something, and while I realize that all nets out essentially the same… it’s still irksome when you feel like you just missed some release.

So have a “limited edition” digital release of sorts is kind of best of both worlds: you can still listen to this, you just didn’t get to own it – so to speak – unless you’d bought into some other deal, but because there’s no physical edition, that doesn’t really sting.

That’s the business model I’m praising – super cool.

Musically, an hour of the same beat can easily shift to becoming background music, even if I’ve enjoyed all of the contributing parts of the mix, but that’s where I’ll also just praise the concept conceptually: this is not a phoned-in mix; MOY slickly smashes together his work such that I only really caught the stitching once or twice. Add to this a “track list” of sorts – a list of the original songs, in sequence – and you’ve really got a project that’s tailored for the MOY superfans.

Combine that praise, and I respectfully mark this with a 5 out of 5.