LCD Soundsystem are breaking down notions of a separation between dance and rock music with their funky, punky soundscape, frontman James Murphy tells Jim Carroll
EVERY act worth their salt should have a theme tune. You hear the tune and then you know what's coming. In the case of LCD Soundsystem, their signature tune is Losing My Edge.
It's a stinging, sarcastic, witty tale of hipster woe, with an ageing trendy sounding increasingly desperate as he talks about all the parties and gigs and clubs he went to back in the day. Originally released in 2002, it still dazzles whenever played - it really is quite a tune.
James Murphy and his band probably play Losing My Edge at every single show they do, but he hasn't tired of it yet. "I made it in three weeks, but it took me three years to find the time to make it."
Yet Murphy marvels at how the song has portrayed him and his band in a way that was never intended. "I try to be as transparent and honest as I can; I'm not trying to sell people 'the new cool'. Yet Losing My Edge made me really cool, which I think is the funniest, most absurd thing ever. It's a funny thing to be cool. I can't be too blasé about it because it's given me opportunities."
Despite his protests, cool seems to be something that goes hand in hand with being James Murphy, a man who has many irons in the fire. He produces records with Tim Goldsworthy as DFA - you'll find the duo's name on records such as The Rapture's House of Jealous Lovers and dozens of other productions that have that punky-funky shuffle that sounds both punk rock and acid house at the same time.
These tunes, Murphy knows all too well, are also seen to be, well, cool. "People like music and do things for lots of dumb reasons, including myself," he says. "Lots of good people like music for dumb reasons, and one of those reasons is that they think it makes them look cool. It's embarrassing and kind of horrible, but it's what people do.
"I know it's what I did as a kid. I loved music more than adults love music. It was my whole life, but I sure as heck bought some records because they seemed cool. That's part of how music gets translated to people, for good or for bad. So, us being somehow cool, that's fine, even if it's still really stupid."
This year, Murphy has spent most of his time away from the studio, fronting LCD Soundsystem. Their self-titled debut album is what they're currently hawking around from one European festival stage to the next and you certainly won't hear a better jerky, punky, funky, bawdy disco record this year. Tunes such as Daft Punk are Playing at My House (more enthusiastic hipper-than-thou sentiments about getting the French robo-disco kingpins to play in your basement), Movement and Yeah make for one very smart, arty, energetic soundclash.
Whatever you do, though, don't call it dance-rock. "That's the worst thing in the world people can say about it!" exclaims Murphy. "It's a knife edge in which almost everything you do is going to be horrible. Think of the history of dance-rock. It's not good, is it? EMF? Jesus Jones? This is what we're talking about here. It doesn't make you dance, it doesn't rock. It's meaningless, it's a bad idea."
He grew up a long way from dance-rock. In Princeton Junction, New Jersey, Murphy would spend his time and money at the Record Exchange shop, picking up records by Suicide and The Birthday Party. Sometimes he would buy the record because he liked the cover and thus sometimes he'd end up with a record by The Mission. He saw The Ramones and Iggy Pop on the same week in 1983 and decided that this was what he wanted to do.
His first bands, Pony and Speedking, went nowhere fast. As he went from one punk flea-pit to the next, travelling in shoddy vans and sleeping on shoddier floors, Murphy was finding out what he liked and didn't like about this game.
"When I was a kid, punk rock was a really optimistic thing. It was all punk rock as long as it wasn't mainstream rock. When I got a chance to be in bands, though, it was like being back in school. There were cool kids and loser kids and rules and power games. You had to record a certain way with a certain producer for a certain label. It wore me out."
Murphy decided to take a break and concentrate on recording other bands. He began by recording them in their rehearsal rooms, before he put together a studio in Brooklyn. After meeting up with Goldsworthy (who had come to New York to work with David Holmes on making Bow Down To The Exit Sign) and finding common ground with the English producer, the DFA die was cast.
"We balance each other," says Murphy of their successful partnership. "When we started working together we really liked it because we couldn't have been more different. This big American dude and Tim's this small English guy with glasses. It's a comedy routine. We have totally different ways of talking, of interacting with people, but we really gel together. We like a lot of the same things and we can communicate. I can talk about music with him in a way that I can't with anyone else."
But Murphy had musical yearnings beyond producing records for other people. He calls LCD Soundsystem "a laboratory for experiments on what a band should do. It was easy to be a good band when we started because other bands were so horrible. Everyone had forgotten how to be a good band."
Strangely, it was dance music that dragged him back behind a microphone. "There finally seemed to be a music that had a reason to be made. I wanted to make people dance. If they did, it was a success. Dance music's had a great tradition of giving people some place to go and be happy and let loose. A lot of people think dance music is so crass and indie music is so real and I think they're missing out. Yes, there's a lot of really horrible dance music, but there's also a great history of dedicated people making things with more heart than most indie bands."
He also saw LCD Soundsystem as a way to mess with people's perceptions about bands and DJs. "When I first did the band and came up with the name, I was never going to differentiate between DJ sets and band sets. You were going to book it and it was going to be what it was going to be. If it was a rock club, I was going to show up and DJ; if it was a dance club, I'm going to show up with a band. I like that. It's antagonistic, but it's not negative."
Murphy was also keen to show that playing live didn't always have to involve loads of unnecessary extras and hassle. "There are issues of ego and presentation that I don't like about touring bands, but I love the power and the potential. I saw some footage of Black Sabbath setting up to play on French television in 1972. They're not really that professional at it, but then they play and they're just unbelievable.
"Now, Black Sabbath would be 16 trucks, 14 buses, 200 crew and a guy tuning up 30 guitars. It's all very false, and safe and protected and corporate and vapid. This system is imposed on bands when they're young and it kills creativity. There's no magic. We're trying to change that a little."
LCD Soundsystem play the Electric Picnic on September 4th
