Davey Ray Moor

Biography

Davey Ray Moor was born as David Raymond Moore in Beirut, his father was an accountant for the United Nations. As a teen he had asthma attacks and was confined indoors where he learned to play the Beatles and David Bowie. During the 1980s he dropped the "e" from his last name, "I thought that taking the E off it would give it a whiff of mystery and intrigue, but it probably confirmed in the mind of some visa bureaucrat that I was kind of a sultry foreigner." He was raised in Canberra and Sydney. In Canberra he had attended Copland College alongside Russell Kilbey, Philip Maher and Charles Ratcliffe.

In 1983 Moor, on keyboards and vocals, with Kilbey, Maher and Ratcliffe formed a rock group, the Crystal Set, in Sydney. Moor also supplied keyboards for the psychedelic band, the Church, on two of their extended plays, Remote Luxury (March 1984) and Persia (August). The Crystal Set issued their debut album, From Now On, in May 1987 – which included the track, "Flat Earth", written by Moor. He left the Crystal Set in April 1988.

Moor relocated to the United Kingdom where he began working at The Beatmasters' studio as a composer. He later established a recording studio near Glastonbury where, for the next decade, he composed soundtracks for television, film, advertising and documentaries. In 1998, with partners Robin Brown and Zennor Alexander, Moor contributed the soundtrack to the BAFTA-winning Best Documentary for a Channel 4 "Dispatches" film. Other prizes included Best Short for an MTV ident at the New York Film Festival in 1993.

Clients across this period include Pepsi, Budweiser, Bacardi, Nintendo, Nissan, Remington, the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, MTV, VH-1 and Sky. All the while Moor continued to dabble in original music, eventually writing all the songs that were to become the launchpad for Cousteau.

Toward the end of the nineties, Moor recruited Cousteau and the band recorded a collection of his songs. In 2001, Chris Blackwell's Palm Pictures released the recordings as a self-titled album. With baritone Liam McKahey singing all but two of the songs (Moor leads the vocals on the others), Cousteau's lounge-set sound was presented with the perfect raft upon which Moor's romantic sound could float. The band received both enthusiastic reviews (Single of the Week, The Times, Album of The Week, The Guardian, 5-stars, Uncut) and sales throughout the United Kingdom and Europe and met with substantial success in the United States.

Capturing the allure of its predecessor, a second album Sirena replicated its critical and substantial commercial success yet Moor departed the band prior to their third American tour. Instead he chose to work as a producer on Italian singer Cristina Donà's album, which achieved critical acclaim and went to No. 4 on the Italian Charts.

In 2004, with the assistance of vocalists Sergio Cocchi, Darion Marshall, Christina Dona and Debbie Sanders, Moor released his first true solo endeavour "Telepathy" on NuN/Edel in Europe. 4 and 5 star reviews across publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine and All Music followed, and Telepathy was included in Musica's Critics Top 100 in 2004 - one of two albums that Moor wrote and produced - the other being Cristina Donà's debut album in English.

In 2005 Telepathy was released by Lakeshore Records throughout the US. Critical reaction was again enthusiastic, some describing the album as the best work of his career.

Moor co-wrote Run With the Boys, Carve My Name, Shadows Fall, Death Fires and This Is The Song on Carl Barat's (ex of the Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things) eponymous solo album, which was released in 2010.