Pitchfork

DFA co-captain James Murphy is set to have a big 2007. His 2006 (and many of ours) was dominated by the release of a 45-minute, single-track exercise mix, 45:33, a collaboration with Nike that showed creativity and corporate sponsorship can happily co-exist in the pursuit of telling runners, "shame on you."

On March 20, he'll release the second LCD Soundsystem full-length, Sound of Silver. A European tour is also scheduled for March. And when he's not touring, he hopes to spend his free time recording new material. Murphy discussed his plans for the busy year with Pitchfork-- but not without also telling us about his approach to taste and how it affects his recording process, reading exercise blogs, and the commonalities between Prince and himself.

Pitchfork: How are you doing?

James Murphy: I'm doing okay. I've been having record company meetings. It's been really interesting being on a major label because you have a Machiavellian idea of what goes on, and then you get involved in it and it's more like M*A*S*H.

Pitchfork: In what way?

JM: It's a little more slapstick. If they were as Machiavellian as one would imagine, the music industry would be doing a lot better.

Pitchfork: So when you say "Machiavellian," you mean that you thought they would be the Machiavellians, not that it would be you planning to take over the world?

JM: Exactly. I prefer to be the Machiavellian in the room. I don't like other Machiavellis in the rooms. There's only room for one.

Pitchfork: So M*A*S*H was a nice surprise, then?

JM: It was good. It's really funny because it's just really banal and weird. It's very surreal, because I'm kind of a forward-moving person and they live in an actual industry reality. Every time we talk to people that work in the industry [or] in radio, they like my record. And I'm like, "Can we get them to play it?" And they remind me that, yes, the programmer likes it, but they won't play it. Radio here is a weird industry. They just play 11 songs, half of which are from the same band.

I was mulling over the concept of coming up with a campaign: wouldn'titbefunnyifwecharted-dot-com. It would be so funny to chart. I want to ask people that are going to buy the record, "If you are thinking about buying it, buy it this week." [I can] sell the exact same amount of records. I just want to do it in a week. I think it would be so awesome and so weird and unsettling, instead of being like, "This is how it works, and we know it sucks," actually doing something and making it work organically and not just be a mystery. Not like, "Oh, this is luck!" "No, this is not luck. We asked people who cared about music to go buy the record: 'If you're not going to buy it, fine. I don't care. But if you are, go buy it that week, and see what happens.'"

Pitchfork: It's much less cynical that way.

JM: Exactly. I happen to be a very optimistic guy. [If I weren't] then I would be making horrendous big records with horrendous big people and buying houses. But I can do that later.

Pitchfork: That's for the third record.

JM: Exactly, when I have no soul left and get a funny thin haircut with highlights and tell people how awesome I think they are.

Pitchfork: You could get a reality show, like "LCD: Supernova".

JM: Dude, I'm so there. It's called "Bummer Road".

Pitchfork: Whoa!

JM: It's just going to be a videotape in the bus, and everyone is going to be bummed out. And then there's "Bummer Alley". I like the idea of needing hair and makeup to actually look like myself.

Pitchfork: As far as charting and radio play go, it does seem hard to break into that culture.

JM: I don't want to break into the culture. I would like to-- I think there's room for a lot more music in the mainstream than I think the mainstream thinks there is. I think the audiences are smarter than people give them credit for. I don't think there's been a drop in IQ since Bowie was around. I don't think some sort of gas has been emitted in America that makes people dumber. I think things can surprise us, but if we don't let them surprise us, they don't try.

Pitchfork: So was adding some variety to the mainstream behind your decision to be on a major label at all?

JM: I have always been interested in pop, and I feel like LCD is a pop band. I don't like people that are purists. I don't like them. I get a lot of shit from people being like, "Why didn't you just make dance music?" Those people I find very uninteresting. That type of criticism I find totally invalid. The people I admire the most were [part of] the time period where you could go to Berlin and work with Connie Plank and make a weird abstract record and then walk off and make a #1 hit single with somebody [else]. That was exciting, slipping out of the avant-garde and pop and making them fuse with one another. I wanted to have DFA and have a band on a major label, and that was supposed to be the Rapture. But when they left to go do their own thing, I was like, "Oh crap, I guess I have to do it."

Pitchfork: I'm curious about the exercise mix you did for Nike, 45:33. Do you work out to the mix yourself?

JM: I don't. It's too long for me.

Pitchfork: I've talked to a couple of other people who seem to think the same thing.

JM: We're out of shape, dude. [Nike's] market, I guess, is people that are like, "You're our brand." I don't know. Personally, I wear a heart meter and run twenty minutes at a 165-beats-per-minute heartbeat. I don't do 45-minute runs. I do 20-minute runs, but Nike asked for 45 minutes. And what I wrote for the Nike thing-- like what's written inside-- was supposed to be funny, and nobody really got it. I thought the last line gave it away: "It's perfectly tailored for my run and I hope for yours as well." I wasn't trying to be "funny" funny, and there is true stuff in there but that stuff gets lost in translation a bit.

I don't really listen to music when I run because it distracts me too much. I wrote this thing about slower music being better. It was a total bunch of shit. I wrote that because I wanted to make music that was more like 110 bpm because that's what I'm into. When Nike said it was too slow, I said, "I actually did some research and uh..."

Pitchfork: Yeah, you said it was warm up and cool down music.

JM: That it was distracting or something.

Pitchfork: That was total bullshit?

JM: Yeah [laughs]. I mean, maybe it's bullshit; maybe it's not. I don't know... it could be.

Pitchfork: People came to think that it was a really long cool down period.

JM: [Nike] actually gave me the structure: 45 minutes, seven-minute warm ups, seven-minute cool downs, and have some peaks. I love having rules like that. It's really helpful. I find it a good challenge. They didn't actually dictate too much, but I think they thought I cooled down too much.

Pitchfork: Why did you repeat "shame on you" at the beginning of the mix?

JM: I liked the way it sounded, a little disco. There are very seldom deeper meanings behind disco songs.

Pitchfork: I know that our News Editor was sort of discouraged by it. She was running and thinking, "'Shame on me?' That's not helping me. I feel bad about myself."

JM: [Laughs] I should've said, "You can do it! Go people!"

Pitchfork: But that didn't have the sound that you were looking for.

JM: "Shame on you" sounds so good. I love disco vocals like that, and what they mean. Do you know the [El Coco] song "Cocomotion"? "Do it. Do it. Do it./ Dance the Cocomotion." It just sounds so good.

Pitchfork: How do you know when you've hit on something like that?

JM: I just sit around listening to music, and I start singing while I'm working and I'm like, "Let's go record that." Usually it's something that's really embarrassing, and I'm laughing. And [then] I'm like, "Fuck this, I like it. I'm going to record it."

Pitchfork: Have you had feedback on 45:33 from anyone who wouldn't have heard you otherwise?

JM: I did see some really funny reviews on some exercise blogs, and those were totally hilarious. People were like, "What the fuck is this? Why would I buy this? This is retarded people music! This is music by and for retarded people!" which I thought was totally awesome because it was reaching people who were actually looking for exercise music.

Pitchfork: Did they actually say, "by and for retarded people"?

JM: Yeah! And some other people were like, "I kind of like it, I don't know." I love that. I wish I had more time on my hands to troll the internet and find the responses of people who really got it for exercising. It's very much an Andy Kaufman kind of thing. I love that stuff. I'm not making fun of people who used it for exercising. I think it's awesome. I'm just totally curious how it lands in places like that. That's what is exciting for me. Everything is the body of work, and to have something go out and be released as exercise music and be reviewed by exercisers, that's still the body of work to me. I know that sounds a little bit How to Draw a Bunny, but that's how I see it.

Pitchfork: Having laid the ground rules for 45:33, were there any rules you set for yourself on Sound of Silver?

JM: I wanted it to be more silvery. I didn't want it to be so wooden-toned. I was trying to make it more dramatic and keep it outside of the safe zone of the character of myself that I had created. I wanted to work more details into the songs and not just be stuck on how they're played live. I wanted to record them and destroy them and rework them, and I did that. I didn't want to honor the original tracks as much as I did on the first record. I didn't want it to be as safe as the first record.

On the first record, I did things that I knew were in my comfort zone. On this record, there are a lot of vocals where I really got away from my comfort zone as much as I could. I got to be as embarrassed as I could. When I did "Losing My Edge", I was all out of my comfort zone, all the time. It was really embarrassing, and that was a good feeling. I realized the [first full-length] was less out of my comfort zone because I had created a comfort zone in the first singles and resided in it.

Pitchfork: Is working outside of your comfort zone more rewarding after the fact or is it something you enjoy while you're doing it?

JM: It's a rewarding experience [at that time]. "This is terrifying. This is horrifying and embarrassing, and I'm really going to have to ask myself if I should release this," and that's a good feeling to me because you're living a little. You're actually doing something rather than just doing the same thing. If you do anything else, you're believing the hype. You're saying, "Well, people think I'm cool for this, and they approve of this. And what I'm really doing this for is to keep feeling cool." And if that's what I'm doing, then I'm wasting people's time, and I have no right to make records and release them.

I have a bunch of important goals in making music: it should be enjoyable; it should make me really uncomfortable; I shouldn't rely on my safety zone; I should try to address popular culture; I should make music that I want to listen to at home. It's a series of rules, and if I'm not doing that, if I'm not pushing myself, I'm just trying to get paid.

Pitchfork: How do you know if the embarrassing things are good embarrassing or bad embarrassing?

JM: You don't. That's the scary part. If you knew whether or not it was good embarrassing then it wouldn't be embarrassing. If I like it, then it's good embarrassing. Taste can often be embarrassing. My taste is somewhat embarrassing. If it's embarrassing and I like it, then I will keep it. You can tell when something sucks. You're like, "This actually sucks. We'll delete it. This sounds like a jam band."

Pitchfork: So moving out of your comfort zone isn't about doings things that you dislike?

JM: No, it's just making sure I'm using my aesthetics and taste and not forgetting that I'm actually having aesthetics and taste from outside imposed upon me. My DFA partner Tim [Goldsworthy] and I talk a lot about tastefulness as an external thing as opposed to an internal thing. When people make tasteful music, it's usually taste outside of them, like this agreed bullshit about what's good. Neu! is endlessly tasteful. Nobody can knock them. They've never been big enough to ever really get knocked. I love Neu!, but they're a bit bland and a bit safe. If you made something like Neu!, no one could fuck with you. It's quote-unquote "good." There is a lot of music in nu-disco that I feel relies on being quietly tasteful, and I don't find that very interesting. I think you should always be trying to risk taste.

Pitchfork: You said you try to make music you want to listen to at home. Do you listen to your own records at home?

JM: Yeah, I do a lot.

Pitchfork: A lot?

JM: Well, before I go on tour. They're new to me, and I'm just experiencing them. Right now, I just got this record done, so I've been driving around listening to it. I try to listen to it before it comes out because people see you driving your car and listening to your own record. It's happened to me before. I was listening to an edit last year and pulled up to a red light in Williamsburg, and two kids looked in and were like, "He's listening to his own record."

Pitchfork: They knew who you were?

JM: Yeah, I was in fucking Williamsburg. And the kids were like, "Hey it's the DFA dude...and he's listening to his new record." They probably thought, "What a jerk! Do you take pictures of yourself too?" [Laughs] Always taking pictures of myself, reading about myself, and talking about myself. I'm like Prince. Apparently, he only listens to his own music.

Pitchfork: There are worse people to be like.

JM: That's true, [but] I'm bigger.

Pitchfork: Most people are physically bigger than Prince, though.

JM: [Laughs] Well, you know, I like to be part of the majority.

Pitchfork: From what I've heard so far, it seems like Sound of Silver is a very sentimental record in some ways, a lot of the lyrics especially.

JM: I'm in a different place, to a certain degree. I have a little French bulldog now.

Pitchfork: So maybe this is the dog record?

JM: It's kind of a dog record. It's not that different. There is sentimental stuff on the last record. It's just masked differently. I don't feel like a sentimental person. I avoid writing about [personal] stuff because I feel it can be interpreted kind of sentimentally. I don't want to make an effort to control what people interpret in that kind of stuff.

Pitchfork: You're touring Europe in March, but do you have any plans for touring anywhere else yet?

JM: Yeah, we go out in March and then take a little break in April to do some more recording. I gots me some responsibilities. Then we go out and do Coachella and the U.S.

Pitchfork: What do you have to record?

JM: I vowed to make a new dance track for every single that is released off the album. I got very irritated when we finally got to "Tribulations" [from LCD Soundsystem]. By the time the last single came out, I was putting out old music [as B-sides], and I found that frustrating. It's like, why keep getting excited about a 12" where the only new thing on it is other people's remixes? I don't want to just stop making music because I'm going on tour. So I [will] try to carve some time out for myself to make a new dance track a couple times throughout the tour.

Pitchfork: Are you going to remix anyone else?

JM: I'm remixing [myself] for the first 12". I don't feel like the first single ["North American Scum"] is a dance song, in the social sense. Some people will DJ anything if it's a 12", and I get really frustrated with that [because] I really like dance music. So I don't want to make the only thing getting serviced by DJs on my dance 12" to be made by other people.

I'm mixing the Prinzhorn Dance School record in February, and hopefully [I'll] have some time to do some remixes. But most of the time I will have during the tour is going to be dedicated to be making new stuff.

Pitchfork: What are you doing in the downtime before the tour starts? Do you have any holiday plans?

JM: I'm going to Japan for Christmas. I've done it before. I'm DJing with Shit Robot, and then going to Hong Kong and China. My wife lived there for months, years ago, and really loves it. Marcus Lambkin, the Shit Robot guy, and his wife are two of our favorite people in the world. They live in Germany now, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to see our friends and walk around and buy each other crazy stuff and [for me to] work on my Japanese. I'm good with getting food and taxis and stuff. I find it a real natural language for me, actually, which is weird because I don't think it's [supposed to be] a natural language.

Pitchfork: What is Christmas like in Japan?

JM: Christmas over there is really cool. It's much more of a Valentine's Day, a date holiday. If a guy and a girl go out on Christmas, it means they are pretty serious.

Pitchfork: What does it mean if the couple goes to see LCD Soundsystem on Christmas?

JM: We're not playing, but I think it means they are going to have a baby.