LOS ANGELES

THERE are a number of things that delight Moby, once the ultimate downtown New York musician, about his castle in the Hollywood Hills: the gatehouse turret, from which the original owner’s pet monkey screamed across the canyons when the house was built in 1920s; the lore, both rock ’n’ roll and literary and decadent, that has the Rolling Stones living here for a spell, Aldous Huxley residing across the street and porno films shot around the pool; and the hidden room — a former tiki bar — that at one time had a fake grass ceiling and pictures of Hawaiian dancing girls, which he cannot show you, because this house is so new to him that he can’t find the key.

There is also what he calls the “penultimate” Hollywood view, for which you have to go up the stairs to the master bedroom. Be careful: Moby’s one rule is no shoes on the rug. O.K., now plop down on the rumpled bed. Looking through the window straight ahead, you can see the canyon fall to the Hollywood Reservoir; to your right and up the hill is the famous Hollywood sign. If he were a Hollywood producer and wanted to impress some actress, Moby says, he’d use that view.

Has he had the opportunity to impress anyone here so far?

“I had a date, which ended up making out under the view of the Hollywood sign, but nothing too crazy,” says Moby, who is so slight as to be almost as much of a caricature as the drawing on his gray T-shirt. Make that a caricature in pencil. I don’t fit in here? No problem. Rub me out. I work alone a lot of the time anyway. In appearance, Moby is either Jules Feiffer’s illegitimate son, or he was drawn by him.

But back to the view from the bed and that date. How’s that relationship going?

“At present, it’s ambiguous. Back in my drinking days, I used to be a little more promiscuous, but now in sobriety, I’m like a nun.” A quick correction: “A monk.”