LCD trip

So there Hot Press was, in a suitably hip London record store on a muggy summer’s day last year, when a be-mulleted shop assistant passed a 12” over the counter and grunted, “It’s good”. And you know what? He was wrong. It wasn’t just good, it was fucking great. The record was ‘Losing My Edge’ by LCD Soundsystem, straight outta NYC, a seemingly ironic tale of an ageing, trendy muso lamenting the even trendier muso tykes snapping at his heels.

The long rambling rant – straddling a loose ‘punk/funk’ beat – included such choice couplets as “I was the first guy/To play Daft Punk to the rock kids/I played it in CBGBs/Everybody thought I was crazy” and “I was there/When Captain Beefheart was starting his first band/I told him don’t do it this way/You’ll never make a dime ... but I’m losing my edge...” Tongue-in-cheek cleverness? Post-ironic NYC humour? Or just the bare tale of a man feeling out of time? Surprisingly, it’s the latter.

Hot Press meets up with Mr LCD, James Murphy, in a bland but deliciously air conditioned Barcelona hotel on another muggy summer’s day, just under a year after the record first came out, to try and make some sense of the messianic reaction to ‘Losing My Edge’. And find out the truth behind it...

“It was nothing to do with me being superior or not giving a shit, it was actually about me. I started catching myself sounding like an old punk, and it was like ‘holy shit’, how did that happen?!” says the affable James. “I promised myself I’d never sound like that. I’d meet people that would be like, ‘bands today are shit, it was better when we used to play with such and such’ and feel like, ‘holy shit, you’re such a jackass’.”

“And now that all this (slavish press from the rock inkies/dance press/fashionistas… quite similar to the first paragraph of this article, really) has happened, I have people coming up to me going, ‘Oh, I hate those people too’.”

Given the fact that James and his production partner Tim Goldsworthy (ex- of Unkle) are the men behind the desk for (to put it simply) dance/rock innovators DFA-ers The Rapture and The Juan MacClean project, one would wonder why. Between them, they managed to kickstart (whisper it) a new scene, once again thrusting New York City somewhere near the forefront of hip.

DFA (Death From Above, since you asked) operate out of a building in New York which is also home to various other creative types working in various mediums. Are we looking at a contemporary Warholian Factory type thing?

“To be honest, I get really pissy when I hear people compare themselves to that. Warhol was unlike anyone in history… he had a complete understanding of commerce and art at the time… and the band there was the fucking Velvet Underground. So it’s kind of claiming a lot. We have a building with a studio and an office and there’s other people doing other things … so it would be incredibly grandiose for us to claim to be something else.

“For Tim and I, DFA is not an endeavour of ego, we’re not like ‘fuck you, we don’t care what you think’, which is the kind of attitude people have begun attributing to us lately. I think it’s got something to do with the wider world’s perception of New York, that whole Lou Reed thing.”

So how does one remain removed from the hype and stay (remarkably) grounded?

“I think it’s just because I’m old, I’m 33 and Tim is 30 or 31. If this had happened when I was 22, things might have been different; I’d be a complete asshole. I’m 33, I’ve done this for a long time… I know what I love and I know what I don’t like, I know what it is that strokes the ego but what doesn’t mean anything. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I don’t enjoy it… I get as excited as anyone by this. I’m not cynical… I still get blown away by things.”

With albums on the way from The Rapture and LCD Soundsystems, all things going to plan, we’ll soon have something else to get blown away by.