THERE was a time when you really couldn't escape the music of Moby - even if, against the odds, you wanted to. His 1999 album, Play, enjoyed the distinction of having all 18 of its tracks licensed for use in film, television and advertising.

In the UK alone, Moby's songs were used to promote Galaxy chocolate, Thorntons, Rolling Rock, the Renault Kangoo and the Nissan Almera.

The parent album went on to sell 10million copies, and made many critics' best-of-the-year lists.

Moby has kept himself busy since then, working on his new album, Last Night, which is released in the UK today.

If you've never been lucky enough to experience a night out in New York, but want to know what it might be like, the album could be a good starting point, as Moby wrote it to sound like an evening out on the tiles in his favourite corner of the Big Apple.

"For better or worse, I've been going out in the Lower East Side of Manhattan since the early 80s," explains Moby - real name, Richard Melville Hall.

"One day, I thought that I would try to make a record that somehow took a long complicated, crazy, eight-hour night and condensed it into 65 minutes, and that's the fairly loose concept behind this record.

"I wanted the music to be like a reflection on one hand of my history in dance music and, on the other, to reflect the music that the DJs in my neighbourhood are playing."

The resulting album begins - as most nights out do - in a relatively gentle manner, before gradually getting more upbeat, darker and more dance-oriented as it goes on.

"It ends in a quiet, tranquil fashion, which is supposed to reflect 7am when you're stumbling home or sitting on the roof with your friends," he continues.

"One of the things that makes a night out in New York so unique is that you walk everywhere, so it's like the provincial equivalent of nightlife. You walk from bar to bar, or club to club, going to 10 or 12 different places in the course of an evening. It's not like that in a lot of other cities."

Having started out on the underground dance music scene Moby was criticised for the commercial use made of Play's tracks, but he says it was the only way he could think of to get more people to listen to his music.

His previous album, Animal Rights, hadn't been a big seller, while his earlier experiments in dance and ambient music hadn't crossed over into the mainstream either.

Moby, a descendant of Moby Dick author Herman Melville, has never talked about the financial rewards for such heavy licensing, but it's safe to assume, especially considering the brands who used his songs, that he probably never has to work again.

Such financial security may also explain his current lack of interest in commercial success.

"It's interesting," he says. "The record business is falling apart and as it does so, it leaves a lot of musicians and people in the industry to make decisions based on desperation. More often than not decisions fuelled by desperation tend to be bad ones, so it's interesting watching a lot of people make really bad decisions and in my own naive way feeling exempt because I'm in my studio on the Lower East Side making my music and not worrying too much about the commercial ramifications of it all."

Moby's nearly always described as a teetotal vegan. But in truth, he's far from boring; blessed with a killer wit, he swears like a trooper. It also turns out he's not teetotal at all, that's just a popular misconception.

Ever the music lover, he talks passionately about the underground scene in New York, his love of seminal British indie record labels Factory, Rough Trade and Postcard, and explains with genuine glee how, even after all his success, he's still technically a bedroom musician, making all his music in his apartment.

"I sleep in the smaller room, and have the larger bedroom as my studio," he says. "Every record I've made for the last 12 years was made there."

So, as Moby gets nearer to turning 43 (his birthday is on September 11), and having just written an album extolling the virtues of wild nights out in New York, shouldn't he be, well, acting his age?

"I'd love to settle down, but I'm thinking if it hasn't happened at the age of 42, it becomes less likely with every passing year. "I still go out till at least 6am, two or three times a week, and the only thing I've noticed is that the hangovers get a lot worse as I get older."