Soundtrack to our Lives: Moby / UNKLE – God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters

Once in a while something comes along that ticks a lot of boxes in one go and takes you by surprise.  Whilst trying to find an MP3 of Moby’s God moving over the face of the waters, (taken from the soundtrack of the cops n robbers classic Heat) I came accross this remix from UNKLE. I already have the soundtrack on CD so not even sure why I was searching for something I already own, but coincidence is a fine thing when you combine a few things that already hit the spot on their own; in my case UNKLE, Heat and the Moby track taken from the film.  

I was very curious to see what they’d done with Moby’s track, expecting a bunch of breaks and tweaks with some fucked-up samples thrown in for good measure.  How wrong I was!  UNKLE, James Lavelle’s brain child, are probably best known for the Rabbit in Your Headlights video – you know, the one with Thom Yorke‘s vocals and a banned (at the time) video in the UK, featuring a guy getting repeatedly run over by cars (also samples movie dialogue…this time Danny Aiello from Jacob’s Ladder). 

 (NOTE: flashing video…you may have a fit)

Coming in at a slightly epic 11 minutes the start differs little from the original except for a John Malkovich monologue taken from the film Alive  about the plane crash in the Andes where the survivors ate the dead passengers to stay alive themselves.  Slowly but surely though, the remix takes shape; the beat starts, snares start, more strings and thunderclap drums an ever increasing tempo until…stop!  Back to piano with just the vocal “my mind is in a state” with strings building and building.  Really this is a journey you’re taken on and whenever the track does break down, it lifts you right back up to where it left you. 

I first started listening to UNKLE in the mid 90s and I have to be honest this remix took me by surprise, but in a GOOOOOD way!  More house than breakbeats and scratches and more DJ Tiesto than DJ Shadow I can only imagine how well this would go down in a club at 4am and erm, possibly with the addition of some substance or other (or not) to help things along. 

The Malkovich dialogue can be seen here  and adds a philosophical touch that compliments the track well; especially when you throw in the fact that God Moving Over the Face of the Waters is a biblical quote from Genesis chapter 1 verse 2.

So, all in all a fantastic track and one that I’m glad that I stumbled upon – Moby, Heat, Malkovich, UNKLE are strange bedfellows but believe me this one works damn damn well.  That’s not a great conclusion, but I’ll just leave it with a reviewer from YouTube who simply says:

Nice one UNKLE, nice one Moby.