New York-based electronic musician Moby has shared a brand new collaborative track featuring J.P. Bimeni entitled “Should Sleep” via his label Always Centered At Night. The single is a tribute to the 1980s underground dance music scene, playing into the nostalgia of spending the nights on the dancefloor with strangers.

Speaking on the inspiration behind the song, Moby offered, “After disco died in the late ’70s, and before house music took the world by storm in the late ’80s, New York was home to an underground dance music scene that was curated and maintained by revered DJs like Larry Levan and David Mancuso. [‘Should Sleep’] is 100% a tribute and an homage to that scene, when Larry Levan and David Mancuso played iconic tracks by loose joints and brass construction and the Peech Boys to an ecstatic audience of straight, gay, Black, white, Asian people, all joined in building nightly churches out of music and sweat.”

“Should Sleep” begins with and maintains a bouncy beat throughout, blending naturally with  J.P. Bimeni’s joyful harmonizations. The instrumentation builds into an increasingly groovy, funk-inspired sound, accompanied by danceable vocals and artfully placed keys and percussion. The video is just as compelling as the track itself, showing the different approaches of  each of the two artists with Moby in his home studio carefully crafting the track while Bimeni dances and sings in New Orleans’ natural world.

The new single follows Moby’s recent album Ambient 23 which was released back in early January. In February, the artist also revealed that he had tried to create a metal supergroup composed of Tommy Lee of Motley Crue and Pantera’s late founding brothers Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul.

Photo Credit: Pamela Lin