James Murphy interview

FROM September 25, 2006

by Julianne Shepherd y Piotr Orlov
c. 2006 the above, and Urge.com

It took only one release for the DFA to redefine the sound of young New York: The Rapture's 2002 dance-punk era kick-starter, "House of Jealous Lovers." By gluing together skuzzy distorted beats, electronic-funk propulsion and healthy dollops of jaded youth attitude, producers/remixers/label impresarios Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy didn't just bring the mojo back to the Big Apple, they gave the dance underground a new groove and a label to call home. An acronym for Death From Above (retired after 9/11), DFA has expertly captured the new millennium's "We're all gonna die, so let's dance" post-traumatic stress-disorder free-for-all. This is partially a testament to the omnivorous musical natures of Goldsworth and Murphy -- the former's a hip-hop-loving Brit expat who'd previously worked with trip-hop supremos UNKLE, the latter's a former indie-punk drummer-turned-engineer from Jersey -- and how they've meshed. In five years, the two have become in-demand remixers (reworking tracks for everyone from Nine Inch Nails to NERD, to the Chemical Brothers), while the record company they founded is home to a diverse stable of artists experimenting with electronics in rock/pop/noise contexts. URGE sat down with Murphy to discuss the music that formed and informed his and Goldsworthy's signature sound, and made them the kings of "hipster jackasses" the world over.

URGE: How do you and your DFA partner, Tim Goldsworthy, connect on music?

James Murphy: Well, I'm American and Tim's English; [it was about] finding things to talk about that weren't really obvious. We talk about the things that we actually liked about music. The word "actually" comes up a lot -- what things are actually about, what actually makes them good -- because when most people listen to music, I think they hear very large, round gestures. [For instance], when people hear disco and hear that high-hat, they just see bell bottoms. You can't understand the little details. But with each other, we both knew a lot about music and loved it in a very similar way, but we had a very different language and very different reference points. It's like speaking a foreign language and being able to say 'hi, taxi, hotel, check please,' but also [having the ability to discuss] physics. We can talk about something very specific in a different language.

URGE: Can you explain what you mean by "different language"?

Murphy: We started using records that had very specific gestures to design the hieroglyphics of music that we wanted to use. T. Rex is a really good example. There are a couple of tracks where I'm convinced the drums were recorded fast, and then slowed down because if you speed them up, the patterns are kind of macho. But no one would play that way at the tempo that they're at. It's not so much that it sounds slow, but they're a little underwater and a little bit gentler.

So we use [touchstones] like that to describe making things sound underwater. Or there are vocals on Sly Stone records, like "Just Like a Baby" from There's a Riot Goin' On, that sound really "close," with a bit too much low end, and they stick out a little bit. We refer to that as "claustrophobic." So I know when I'm [telling Tim], 'Oh, the vocals need to be a little more claustrophobic; they can't be so shiny,' we know what that means. It means, like, Mark E. Smith or Sly Stone, where the mic is not invisible, the mic is your ear, like having someone talk into your head. Everything off There's a Riot Goin' On is really overly close, and with T. Rex, it's really "Cosmic Dancer" and "The Slider." Those are the two songs that just the bass and the drums and everything seems to slow down. Really beautiful. And the vocals on the T. Rex stuff that work like strings. There's a Tyrannosaurus Rex song, "Scenes of Dynasty," off of Prophets, Seers and Sages, I think that's just a great one. There's just clapping and singing and that's it, and little bits of vocal bits in the background. There's nothing else in there. It's one of my favorite things ever.

URGE: You used the words "hieroglyphics" and "claustrophobic" to describe music. Do you have other words that represent a sound?

Murphy: Yeah. "Dumb" and "retarded" get used a lot as really positive [words]. Drummers now are really smart, and I don't like smart drumming. [Drummers today] play either super-technical or like, "I'm a kid in a garage!" [all laugh] There's this whole middle ground of drums, like if you watch Stevie Wonder do "Superstition" on "Sesame Street," they close in on the drummer -- he's just a teenager. He weighs like 100 pounds. Like a stick with an Afro. It's just the dumbest drumming. And it's genius. I defy drummers now to play like these guys. Everything's just ... I don't know how else to say it but "dumb." All the drumming on Al Green records is monumentally dumb. It's so dumb, and so good. Keith Richards is a dumb guitar player. I'm not a big Rolling Stones guy, but I've always felt I like how dumb his playing is. Coldplay is much cleverer with the little things, a little less embarrassing, in how the guitars are placed, and the bass and the drums. They're not a bad band or anything, but when you compare that to the ridiculous -- is it Rick Wakeman who plays piano on [David Bowie's] Hunky Dory? It's just absurd. But it's all kinds of bar-roomy, played by this really dexterous jackass. Everything's kind of lumpy.

URGE: Back to some of the initial touchstones between you and Tim. A lot of your DFA work sounds slightly acided out, but with natural drums underneath it.

Murphy: A lot of it is natural drums, but again, a lot of old dance music is breaks. We talk about disco and acid house a lot. Things just have to have some form of wiggle. If they don't have a wiggle, they just sound like they're yelling at you. The acid house really came from Tim. What we decided when we met was that we were both massive Smiths fans. Both of us saw the same first show: the Ramones. I listened to the Pixies and Sonic Youth and Mudhoney, and we both liked Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. I like a lot of the Chicago stuff, like Trax Records, "Your Love" by Frankie Knuckles, things like that. I'm always reaching towards "Lowrider" by War, "White Horse" by Laid Back, "Higher State of Consciousness" by Josh Wink. Tracks that become references for us.

URGE: What other disco records were you listening to?

Murphy: That could go on forever. When we started DFA, I had determined for me that Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" was the best dance song of all time. I just saw it as the most translating song.

URGE: Translating, meaning one single song affects 12 different groups?

Murphy: It's just dance music. It's disco, it's techno, it's soul, it's electro, but more American, more soul-y, more of the genre that turned into the abomination that is soulful house.

When I first heard dance music, period, all I could hear was C&C Music Factory. You could play me anything. You could put on Carl Craig, and I'd be like [sings intro synth to "Gonna Make You Sweat."] ... Everything had "good vibrations," everything wanted to make me sweat. I just felt like I was going to be some guy in a really sleek jacket. Like safe-sex-making music.

URGE: Did Tim come to DFA with one song that he thought defined dance music as completely as you thought "I Feel Love" did?

Murphy: He came with a lot of different stuff that he loved. A lot of it was American; a lot of it was hip-hop, because that was the "other." So he came in knowing that the Bomb Squad were incredible -- they were the other. We had a lot of talks about that -- the relationship of a white dude in New Jersey to hip-hop versus a relationship to a white dude in Yeovil [a small town in southern England] to hip-hop. It's a very different relationship. I loved Public Enemy -- they were one of my favorite things in the world, but I would never consider making music that had anything to do with it. No matter how much I loved it, I just wouldn't conceive of it. Whereas for him, he loved it -- and it was the music he wanted to make. That didn't seem weird, anymore like it didn't seem weird for me to try to make music like The Cure. He was into twee, like Pastels, Dentists. We were both humongous Smiths fans. I think that can't be understated, or that can't be overstated.

URGE: Did you ever do hip-hop in the '80s, growing up?

Murphy: I liked hip-hop, but not as dance music. I liked Public Enemy. I liked Native Tongues. But I never thought of it as dancing, never really thought about dancing at all until '99. It was good music for my car.

URGE: What happened in '99?

Murphy: I took ecstasy, like everybody else.