After keeping the international music scene in a stranglehold throughout 2005 with the rise and rise of his DFA record label; the masterful DFA remixing touch, which sees everything he and DFA partner-in-crime Tim Goldsworthy (UNKLE & Mo’Wax co-founder) touch, turning to gold. As well as the benchmark release of LCD Soundsystem’s self-titled debut, which spawned the instant disco-punk anthems ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’, ‘Disco Infiltrator’ and ‘Tribulations’, which also recently received him two well-earned Grammy nominations.
The path ahead continues to steadily rise for Murphy, as he gets set to wreak havoc on our shores, with his amazing DJ sets on the 2006 Big Day Out tour and at some select club shows. ITM’s Semone Maksimovic managed to catch up with the notoriously grumpy genius, as he enjoyed some time-out in a New York bar, after a spot of last minute Christmas shopping. After spending quite a large chunk of 2005 touring throughout the US, Europe and UK supporting the release of LCD Soundsystem’s debut record. He’s happy to be back in the saddle in New York, where the word sleep actually has a meaning and he can enjoy some quality time with wife, Mandy Coon (of electroclash outfit WITand ex-designer for the X-Girl label) for a white Christmas, before they gear up to head down under for some summer fun come late January “I can’t wait to come out, Australia was my father’s favourite place in the world and I haven’t been out there before” shares a happy Murphy through the crackles on the line and clinking of glasses in the background.
Finding Murphy jovial and easy to warm into conversation isn’t at all what I had expected, from a man surrounded by a high level of hype and a generous serving of crazy rumours. With unconfirmed stories of pop-princesses chasing him for some much-needed DFA-cred and of course the high level of anticipation surrounding his every move, whether it be with LCD Soundsystem, DFA or just as a DJ, it seems that everyone is hungry for a piece of ‘the Pharrell Williams of punk funk’. Something the 35 year old can only manage to snuffle a laugh at “I outweigh him, that’s all I can say. I mean I physically outweigh him, but he outweighs me in every other way, he outweighs me in charisma, funds, skills and celebrity. But I physically outweigh him, literally almost double, so if it came down to like a grappling match, I think I could take him!” laughs Murphy about the media label “Other than that it’s just funny, I love being the underdog to people that I’m older than.”
With such a hyped existence since the 2003 release of the DFA-helmed ‘Echoes’ by a little known (at the time) New York punk band The Rapture (who despite rumours, are still very much on good terms with Murphy), it’s something he’s learned to live with and not buy too highly into, when it comes to himself, no matter how warranted it may be. Something that keeps him a little more even-keeled about the whole thing, strapped with a fresh hunger to bring us something amazingly different with each project, he’s not happy to sit back and rest assured that his work is done.
“It’s funny, I mean, I’m not anti-fashion, I’m not anti-hype, I’m not anti-anything. I’m just pro-music and hype doesn’t help or hurt music at all, it’s just meaningless” he states “When you’re 35 and you’ve been a failure for most of your life, it’s a little hard to buy the hype.
Like Wow, I AM somebody else all of a sudden- amazing! I didn’t realise I was cool all of this time, why am I such a loser?” asks a half-joking Murphy “I think there’s a certain point where you just settle in. Where you realise that you’re probably going to be buying the larger size pants and you’re not going to say all of the right things and look great in a certain type of jacket and you deal, that’s life.”
Murphy has always been his own biggest critic, something that was evident early on, through the lyrics of cult-hit ‘Losing My Edge’, his humour and ridicule at his own expense has always been an endearing one, one that has him coming across as not such a flawless and untouchable existence. But still, when it comes to his work, he tends to be a little too hard on himself, especially when it comes to the LCD hit of the year ‘Tribulations’.
“The lyrics are garbage! They were a mistake. I kinda knew in my gut, that I shouldn’t take the song seriously in the beginning. So I didn’t care about the lyrics, I was just explaining to a friend how to use a writing program. But once it was recorded it just took over, that version just became the version that stuck and I couldn’t change the lyrics for whatever emotional reason, because I was too attached to them as they were” reveals Murphy in all honesty “I think it’s a really good pop song and sometimes pop songs have bad lyrics. I just don’t feel like the world needed another song with mediocre rock lyrics and I felt bad about putting another vague song into the world. Not that it’s a big crime or anything, but it’s not what my job in the world of music is, my job in the world of music is to do something different than that.”
It’s hard to believe that this punk, funk, disco maestro almost took life’s career path in the opposite direction at the age of 22. As a trip to LA and lunch with a friend’s family friend landed him a script writing job for a little known sitcom by the name of Seinfeld. “My friend in LA was an actor and his sister was an actor and their manager was like a family friend, so we all went to have lunch with their manager and she was complaining that they didn’t have anybody in New York to write the script. My friend was like ‘Oh, James is a really good writer’, so I gave them some stuff that I’d written and they liked it and sent me a bunch of scripts. Stating that if they liked the results I’d have a job, cause at the time they only had Larry David and Jerry writing. But at that age, I was still just a stupid musician smoking too much pot, so I went home and never managed to get round to it” laughs an unperturbed Murphy “It wasn’t until a year later that I put two and two together and realised that it was Seinfeld and thought it was funny, I could have been really rich, but I’m not.”
Thank god for that, where would we be without such a force on the scene, here to shake things up and make music interesting again?
Make sure you catch him as he slips in and shakes it up on our shores with a few amazingly select dj shows, as he catches our breath on BDO stages and as he warms crowds across the nation for long-time friends 2 Many DJs. LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Tribulations’ and it’s elite host of remixes (by the likes of Lindstrom and Tiga) is out now through EMI.
Sun Jan 22 – Big Day Out, Gold Coast (SOLD OUT)
Wed Jan 25 – Home w/ 2manydjs, Sydney (BUY TICKETS)
Thu Jan 26 – Big Day Out, Sydney (SOLD OUT)
Sun Jan 29 – Big Day Out, Melbourne
Fri Feb 3 - Big Day Out, Adelaide
Sun Feb 5 – Big Day Out, Perth
