Cyrus McNally Cyrus is a fourth-year neuroscience student who is currently developing a dependable neural prosthesis module – and matching cryogenesis jumpsuit. E-mail him at nougat@ucla.edu.

If you haven’t heard of Moby by now, you either hate dance music with a passion or you’ve been living in Boelter your whole life.

Despite what your preconceptions might be, Moby – aka Richard Melville Hall – has been around. He’s been cutting phat, revolutionary dance tracks since you were in Pampers (well, supposing you were wearing Pampers up until or after 1982). But thanks to the huge success of his 1999 multi-platinum album “Play,” he has only recently caught the limelight.

Each and every track on “Play” has been licensed for either commercials or movie soundtracks, meaning you’ve probably heard Moby without even knowing it. For example, “Play’s” first single, “Porcelain,” was featured in the soundtrack of last year’s “The Beach,” alongside Orbital’s collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti (whom Moby sampled in his first big hit, “Go”) and a host of other electronic music innovators.

Moby was born in 1965 in Harlem, New York; the great-great grandnephew of Herman Melville, who inspired his namesake with his required-reading classic “Moby Dick.” A multi-instrumentalist, he took up the guitar by age 9 and began making recordings in his basement three years later. After getting into proto-goth bands like Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, Moby was inspired to start his own group, and ended up playing gigs with hardcore groups, like Flipper, for whom he assumed vocal duties while its frontman was serving out a jail sentence.

Even though he has since renounced almost all of his outward beliefs he so vehemently urges in his CD booklets, Moby stands by his commitment to quality in production of his music. “The strange thing is,” declared Moby in the liner notes of a 1993 CD compilation, “I played in bands for a long time and when I started making dance music I never anticipated it leading to any sort of success.” Needless to say, the success has piled on even higher since, and he will most likely continue the trend.

A New York DJ since dropping out of college in 1984, Moby didn’t release his first single until 1990. Titled “Go,” the track became an instant dance floor smash, rising into the UK top 10, where the rave scene was just getting into full gear. “Go” borrows string samples from a rather odd source – Badalamenti’s theme to the cult series “Twin Peaks” – to introduce a thundering house beat and flanged synthesizers, underneath diva vocals and an angry group of men chanting the title.

Perhaps “Go” hit the right place at the right time, propelling Moby into instant celebrity, but his first EP for Elektra Records in 1993 failed to gather any of the attention “Go” garnered. With the disappointing sales of 1995’s “Everything is Wrong,” Moby fell back into obscurity.

Between those two years, however, Moby helped redefine the role of the dance-music producer. With his hit club single “Move,” and the experimental release “Thousand” (entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the fastest single ever recorded – at 1000 bpms!) – as well as his maniacally invigorating live performances, he became a highly respected figure. With his fame, he procured remixing jobs from artists such as Michael Jackson, Brian Eno, Depeche Mode and the B-52’s.

Also of note are Moby’s two contributions to the soundtrack of the 1995 crime epic “Heat.” His first track, “New Dawn Fades,” is a drum-heavy remake of an apocalyptic Joy Division song, setting the mood for a hi-tech, inner-city bank robbery sequence. The other track, celestially titled “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters,” (said by Moby to be his favorite piece he ever recorded), sets delicate layers of tinkling piano riffs rising above a brooding string section, and climaxing with thundering cymbal crashes. It’s hard to think of a worthier song to accompany the scene where Robert DeNiro bleeds to death. While 1996’s “Animal Rights” fared only slightly better than “Everything is Wrong,” 1997’s “I Like to Score” is a just portrayal of Moby’s self-owned style, capturing the highlights of his career as soundtrack producer and giving clues as to where his future work was headed.

Two years later, “Play” hit the stores, but not to immediate popularity. It took at least three or four months on the shelves before the public finally gave the album a chance; those who even remembered the dance scene veteran were probably wary because of his unpopular back catalog. Although Leonardo DiCaprio and “The Beach” were contaminated, “Porcelain” had an all-around clean vibe, being instantly recognizable and receiving much airplay. Other singles like “South Side” (whose original take featured vocals by Gwen Stefani) and “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad” helped propel “Play” into the Billboard Top 10, and to No. 1 in Europe.

In case you haven’t already heard it, “Play” is more than poignant soundtrack pieces, varying stylistically from clubland smashes (“Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad”) to guitar-driven rock (“South Side”) to breathtaking ambience (“My Weakness”).

Although most of the old-time American music remakes (“Honey” and “Find My Baby”) are taken from the same “Music of the South” compilation album, Moby breathes new life into old – very old – recordings by adding phat drum beats, blistering bass lines and record scratches, successfully touching up the oldest of the old with the newest of the new. The album’s genre-technology crossbreed results in a unique success – much like the success of its creator.

With “Songs,”a new compilation of pre- “Play” material recently released, Moby hopes to bring new fans up to snuff on a decade’s worth of old material with tracks from four of his previous releases. Although he is not touring at the moment, his next gig is later this month at Carnegie Hall for the Tibet House Organization, where he will play alongside fellow music revolutionaries Philip Glass and David Bowie.

A trend-setter, Moby continues to break the limits of what can or should influence dance music with his recent live shows – even though he has already been quietly breaking ground for over a decade.