h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok heres the next gig review. Moby, 2000-feb-10 London Astoria.
Lets start with the support act (cos they went on first) it was HardRocx Two DJ's one male one female (who was also a singer of sorts) playing rocked out hip hop breakbeats. They also had a couple of erm exotic dancers on stage as well. It was actually quite good, even if I did start by thinking what is going on here. At one point I burst out laughing because one of the sample/cuts they were using was from a KLF track that I just didn't expect to be there.
Now the main attraction, Moby. Quite what I expected him to do in a live show I don't know as his music is mostly composed by himself alone with synthesisers, drums and probably a huge stack of records that he can sample from. His latest album Play, uses some samples from blues and gospel recordings made way back (a point he made telling the audience before one of the tunes that he would have had the singer there, but he'd been dead for over forty years). He did have a band of three other people, drummer, bass player and DJ (one turntable) who played some synth stuff as well. Moby played guitar, bongos, synth and the audience.
Now what i didn't expect was the energy of the man himself, running, jumping and shouting the word love at the audience. He did stuff from throughout his carrer, from Go to a lot of stuff from the new album, with things like his reworking of the James Bond Theme in between.
The set did rely heavily on samples, but that was expected.
The finale of the show had Moby just standing in the middle of the stage behind a keyboard whilst one of this techno tracks played. That was it he just stood there, lifted his arms up and then put them back at his side. He did climb on the keyboard and stood there. Of course the lights were going crazy, strobe effects, sweeping multi coloured spots. The audience (myself included) were going crazy. Amazing really as he didn't do anything at during the finale.
All in all, a very good gig, expecially as it only cost £8.50, bargin