Album: 18

Moby, Mute

The shock success of 1999's Play caught everyone by surprise – not least Moby himself, who still regards the album's adoption as global feelgood soundtrack as a bizarre anomaly. Not that Moby was exactly a stranger to anomalous behaviour, having already earned a reputation for quixotic changes of style and temperament: his short career had thus far zigzagged from house to techno to hardcore punk, culminating in 1996's Animal Rights, a thrash-metal opus whose pompous veggie-Christian sermonising was understandably spurned by the hedonistic ravers who formed the core of his fan-base. It was almost career suicide: by the time he wanted to put out Play, Moby was struggling to find a US distributor, and only the continuing support of the left-field UK indie Mute – noted for its support of maverick talents – ensured its release.

The album's subsequent success speaks volumes about the power of advertising, as agencies around the globe plundered its tracks for use in commercials. By harnessing old blues and gospel sound-bites to heart-swelling synthesiser string washes and house beats, Moby had stumbled on the most potent feelgood music of the age, and over the next couple of years, he helped to sell countless cars, drinks and domestic appliances. And 12 million copies of his own album.

18 continues the Play formula, except that instead of old blues samples, the vocal sound-bites are drawn from soul tracks, with unnamed divas cooing lines such as, "Oh you're gonna leave me/ All by myself in this world" over and over like a mantra, as the familiar synth strings swell and the simple piano grooves gather momentum behind them. At their best, the tracks develop an atmosphere akin to Massive Attack's early work, with that same mood of sinister warmth; at their worst, they simply remind one that this kind of stuff is all just footnotes to "Ride on Time", however sensitively the samples are employed.

There's no doubt that Moby has an assured grasp of certain strata of music's emotional spectrum, with his chord sequences and synth washes deftly conveying moods such as hope, loss and consolation. So it's odd that he should rely so heavily on others' second-hand vocal expressions as emotional triggers, which gives the album a rather impersonal air. Even the guest vocalists, such as Sinead O'Connor and Angie Stone, seem depersonalised by proximity to the looping sound-bites of the sampled soul divas.

It may be the quintessential American music of the age, offering vague emotional backdrops for a nation numbed by the shallowness of its entertainment industry, now barely able to articulate feelings of any greater complexity than the showbiz clichés of love, anger, revenge. For a culture with a spiritual vacuum at its heart, Moby's tints of melancholy and uplift will provide the perfect emotional landfill. And sell a few more cars.