You probably know James Murphy as the geek who made your hips sway. He’s the sardonic music nerd who shattered 30 years of seven-inch dance singles and pieced the genre back together. As the creative centre of LCD Soundsystem, Murphy channelled the spirit of everyone from New Order and Kraftwerk to the Velvet Underground, cutting a catalogue of floor-filling wig-outs with a 95 per cent first-serve percentage.
The New Yorker’s legacy runs deep. As an artist and co-founder of DFA records, he was the octane that powered dance- punk, an indie music sub-genre of the early 2000s. Rock bumped pelvises with disco. Guitar lines straddled synthesizers. It was one of the most fashionable sounds in indie and electronica, before quickly slipping between the dance floor boards.
But as post-millennium guitar music starts creaking at the seams, dance-punk or disco-punk is having something of a revival, with LCD Soundsystem stepping back on to the stage. The beginning Dance-punk’s origins stem from the late 1970s, when disco was king and the synthesiser was standard. Musicians were testing the musical limits by fusing rock with electronica. Many post- punk, krautrock and new wave artists shared a similar ethos – but it was bands such as Gang of Four, ESG and Liquid Liquid that adopted a rhythmic style that could get bodies swaying.
Urgent basslines, earth-moving synths, danceable grooves and enough cowbell to make Christopher Walken weak at the knees – modern dance-punk grabbed the indie landscape and shook it up. The arrangements sounded cheap and dirty, as though the songs were jammed in an old warehouse on instruments caked in grime.
LCD Soundsystem represented the genre's gold standard. Murphy came up moonlighting in various bands, DJing, producing music for David Holmes, and even turned down a writing gig on Seinfeld, figuring the sitcom would go nowhere. Infused by the spirits of Bowie, Warhol and his box of art-punk records, he encapsulated the caustic cool of modern-day Manhattan in his own mordant way.
All those experiences act as a filter on the group's first single Losing My Edge. Released in 2002, the track is a near eight- minute rip on emerging hipsterdom over a scuzzy, minimalist electronic beat. It is dinky, derisive and funny – the perfect push back to the "art-school Brooklynites" and encyclopedic audiophiles created by the boom in illegal MP3 sharing.
Three albums followed – LCD Soundsystem (2005), Sound of Silver (2007) and This Is Happening (2010). Each encased dance-punk's sonic tapestry. Despite its name, Daft Punk Is Playing At My House is built of slimy-grimy riffs, not the French duo's glittering glamourama. North American Scum sounds more sellotaped together than immovable synths of electronica-heavy bands like Justice and MGMT. Murphy's wry, conversational vocal stylings came through on ballads such as New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down, a Lou Reed-style stroll through NYC's midtown on a bitter cold day.
All My Friends encapsulates the band's nostalgic brilliance. It's a part-euphoric, part-reflective meditation on the final flickers of youth. Murphy loops an unsteady, chaotic piano riff. The skeletal beat nails the runic atmosphere of the morning after the night before. It's about that one hazy moment "when the sun comes up, and I still don't wanna stagger home". Murphy wears a smile, but it's not so broad that you can't see the pain that it's a period of his life that's over.
Modern contemporaries LCD Soundsystem raked in most of the critical confetti, but they weren't without peers. Everything you need to know about the genre is in The Rapture's debut album Echoes (2003). The record sounds like a disco ball being smashed by a baseball bat.
If much of dance-punk could sound charmingly ramshackle, then !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk) sounded practically stitched together. Released in 2000, the band's self-titled debut album was an important early example of the genre that can't be ignored. Elsewhere, Canadians Death From Above 1979 cranked up the dirty riffs well past 11, while Norwegian band Datarock went the other way, bringing a more lo-fi aesthetic.
In the UK, Franz Ferdinand's crunchy guitar lines were underpinned by their shimmering glam-rock influences. Infectious singles such as Take Me Out and Do You Want To? took the debonair Glasgow four-piece to the heights of MTV2 stardom. Inversely, Bloc Party drew from the darkest corners of the indie canon, combining razor-sharp riffs with more kinetic grooves.
Bands such as The Klaxons, Hot Chip and Shitdisco were dubbed “new rave” by British music writers, hoping to anoint them as spiritual successors to the scene that inspired “old skool” warehouse shuffling a decade earlier. Elsewhere, Tom Vek made high-art bedroom music, while Melbourne’s Cut Copy saw a summer glamourama of neon-tinted dance. Like a high-end athlete pushing their body to the limit, the genre burned brightly and burned out. For every Franz Ferdinand, there were 10 sub-par groups. “Dance-punk” was never a byword for absolute quality.
Despite continuing to make solid music, The Rapture never hit the same critical peaks their debut attracted. Franz Ferdinand released four albums, each arriving with less fuss than the last. Bands arrived fully formed. Creatively, they burned out quickly and sank without trace.
By the time LCD Soundsystem called it a day in 2011, dance- punk was dead. There was no need to be sour. Like disco, UK garage and bell-bottom jeans, the genre has become crystallised in time. Now back on the road after a hiatus, Murphy brings his own new-age nostalgia. LCD Soundsystem play the Main Stage at Electric Picnic on Saturday.
