STRAIGHT SHOOTER
Mar 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Justin Kleinfeld
James Murphy just might hold the key for igniting another dancefloor revolution. While the previous dance-music explosion was largely associated with superstar trance DJs, drug culture and glow stick-bearing ravers, the new dance movement is based on more of a punk-rock ideal. Those who previously shut out dance-music DJs and clubs from their weekend activities now find themselves dancing to the beats of James Murphy's stable of DFA artists and his own live act, LCD Soundsystem.
LCD Soundsystem initially caught fire in 2002 with hot underground 12-inch releases “Give It Up” and the genre-defining “Losing My Edge.” Subsequent releases “Yeah” and “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” led to a record deal with Capitol Records and LCD Soundsystem's 2005 self-titled debut album. Beyond LCD Soundsystem, DFA has also flourished as a record label and moniker for production and remix collaborations between Murphy and co-founder Tim Goldsworthy. The label has released music from artists including the Juan MacLean, The Rapture and Black Dice, and it has dropped two volumes of DFA remixes through a relationship with Astralwerks.
Ironically, while DFA and LCD Soundsystem might be two of dance music's most promising entities, Murphy isn't all that much of a dance-music fan. Rather, Murphy grew up on punk rock, played in rock bands his entire life and cites Brian Eno, The Fall, The Velvet Underground, Richard McGuire from Liquid Liquid, Holger Czukay from Can and Jah Wobble from Public Image Ltd. as some of his primary influences. “I thought dance music was all about C+C Music Factory,” he says, “and when I heard a piano stab or a 909, I immediately tuned out and stopped listening to it. Although, I do like old disco, Chicago house and that classic stuff from Detroit — you know, something seminal.”
Murphy looked to his rock influences and to the finer side of dance music for the creation of his new LCD Soundsystem record, Sound of Silver (Capitol, 2007). The record was created almost entirely using analog gear, and it's filled with the raw, edgy sound often missing in today's computer-aided dance music. Lyrically, Murphy opens up with songs that will get people talking, especially on “North American Scum” and “New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down.” One thing that can't be conveyed through the album alone is Murphy's true passion for the craft of making and presenting his music. He's extremely opinionated about how music should be produced, played live and marketed, and he loathes producers who take the easy way out. While some might find Murphy's outspokenness to be a bit arrogant or boorish, his high standards for everything that bears his name have paid off — Sound of Silver is downright nasty and already one of 2007's finest releases.
RIDING THE SILVER BULLET
Sound of Silver was recorded in spurts between April and November 2006. Rather than devote his full attention to recording the album, Murphy also worked on a piece of music for Nike's workout series titled 45:33 and embarked on a DJ tour. “I prefer to put things down and pick them up again because you forget what you were previously worrying about,” he says. “You'll start hearing the track with fresh ears again if you put things to the side and pick them up later.” Murphy drew on classic rock, techno and disco for the new album and brought in a bunch of records for sonic reference and to prevent him from getting mired in what the studio speakers sounded like. He also felt that his first album was “wood-toned and a bit too comfortable” and sought to make an album that was more awkward and with more elements of glam rock. “I wanted it to be shinier and spacey and not so homey,” Murphy says.
Murphy's working style isn't so much structured as it is constant. “I like to work really fast and do a lot of detail work. Rather than paint a small perfect picture, I like to work roughly and as quickly as possible. I put as much detail into a huge mural knowing that some things won't be photo-realistic, but it's better to keep pushing forward.” By focusing on the rough elements of his tracks and not the detail work, Murphy often ends up releasing unfinished rough mixes of his tracks. “I typically never know when one of our tracks is done because almost everything we release is a rough mix,” he says. “I just figure that whatever else I do to a track is taking it away from what I already like, so I just leave it.” Lead single “North American Scum” went through many permutations, and the version that appears on Sound of Silver is actually the rough mix. As he does with some of his poppier songs, Murphy originally wrote a framework for the track on Propellerhead Reason and quickly composed the changes with really dinky phone-ring sounds so that he wouldn't be tempted to keep them for the final mix. “It's like a Kraftwerk version of what the song is supposed to sound like,” he says. Once the Propellerhead Reason sketch of the track was written, Murphy and his team added additional instrumentation and worked toward completing the track.
On the previous LCD Soundsystem album, Murphy created the tracks “Tribulations” and “On Repeat” by himself and was disappointed that they didn't have the natural lift that's achieved when several musicians play together. For Sound of Silver, he wanted to record a song by himself that sounded like a band and had that natural lift. For the track “All My Friends,” Murphy developed a technique whereby he first recorded scratch drums and then went back and played bass over the top of the drum track. Then he went back again and replayed the drums listening only to the recorded bass, and then he again played the bass listening only to the recorded drums. He went back and forth with this pattern about five or six times, and together, they sounded like a band because each take responded to the next. “It was a really good experiment for me because it was nice to arrange a song without cutting and moving things. Even a song as linear as this moved the way it was supposed to move because it sounded right.”
IT'S AN ANALOG WORLD AFTER ALL
Murphy is adamant about not using the computer as a key piece of production equipment and works almost entirely with analog gear. He recorded and edited Sound of Silver with Apple Logic but will not use any soft synths or plug-ins and won't mix on the computer. All mixing and EQing is done on a desk, and all the effects are outboard. He views the computer as a great storage and editing device but claims that this is where it should stop. “Computer mixing sounds abysmal to me,” Murphy insists. “In the computer domain, you get people putting fake tape hiss on things or buying tube emulators, and I think that's a really undignified way of doing things.”
Rather than using tape, Murphy records everything into the computer, runs it through the desk and processes the tracks differently to make each of them musical and unique. Murphy's key to getting his music to sit right in the mix is harmonic distortion and placement in tandem with nice monitors and a balanced control room. He also uses a dbx 162SL stereo compressor/limiter strapped across the mix in order to pump things up or use subtly as a limiting amplifier. Lastly, he tries to keep his tracks as thin as possible — but without sounding too thin. “I try not to put too much bass in things,” Murphy says. “Everyone loves putting lots of bass in things, but I think it winds up sounding like there's no bass at all — it just cancels out. When we get to the end of a track, and something needs bass, then it kind of feels gratifying.”
The one exception to Murphy's bass rule is the title track. Murphy sought out to make a “5 a.m. Balearic jam” with a modular synth, live drums, live bass and piano. He wanted the toms to sound like electronic 909 toms, so he recorded them really dead and thick so they would cut through the listener's chest. “The low end between the drums, toms and the modular synth is pounding, and it's all about bass,” Murphy says. “I knew when I put this on the record that a lot of people were going to hear this on a laptop or an iPod, and it's not going to make sense. But if you ever get the chance to turn it up really loud, it's pretty thunderous. I'm most proud of the low end on this song more than any other song on the album.”
While he does champion analog over digital production methods, Murphy isn't into collecting the newest and most updated gear nor does he believe that it makes music any better. In fact, his band plays $100 Squier Telecasters and 1960s-era Epiphone basses that were purchased from eBay for around $150. Murphy also usually plays the same drum set, bass, bass amp and same guitars on every track. “I'm really into the technology, but I'm more of a customizer rather than a consumer,” he says. “Our console is not that old, not that new and not that fancy, but we rebuilt it. We gutted it and put in a master bus, new ground bus, power distribution and new master section.” Thus, Murphy subscribes to the principle of modifying older and cheaper gear rather than buying expensive gear full of needless bells and whistles. “I was looking to buy a guitar. They make expensive Epiphone Les Paul Juniors, and they also make these cheap ones. I bought the $70 model and then thought about what I wanted from it. I'd rather have this type of pickup, this type of nut; I want these types of tuning pegs and this type of bridge. So I had someone modify it, and it still cost me less than the fancy one and has exactly what I wanted. The fancy one has things that this doesn't have, but [it also] doesn't have things that I care about.”
Murphy also had a friend modify his Fun Machine (an old organ with a filter setting in it) to help him figure out a way to play a live version of the track “Disco Infiltrator” from the last album and for use on Sound of Silver track “Us V. Them.” “We have knobs that have been modified all over this light-up home organ from the '70s,” he says. “You can tap into time where it can receive a pulse and stay in time, and you can also attack the filters. It sounds amazing, and we now use it on a lot of stuff.”
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