An ex-girlfriend of mine once suggested I become a street philosopher. I dubiously asked what that would entail – perhaps standing on a street corner with a decidedly mockney accent whispering to passers by stuff like: “Pukka, don’t feel down mate. Remember the stoics.” Or “Choose life yeah, though don’t forget, only a few of us can truly choose. Do you have the right stuff mate!”?

Of course, this is the kind of thing that would generally get one locked up in a cell for an evening or two, or at least jostled by a few shaven headed primates fresh from Big Brother auditions. Then it dawned on me. James Murphy, in one way or another, is spreading the words of the wise far and wide one nu disco hit at a time. Plus, and this is the kicker, the guy’s M.O. seems bound by the famous quote “No one ever really kids” (ie. ‘jokes’). So, you know, ‘Daft Punk Is Playing At My House’? That’s fusion. A manifest statement on quote culture that’ll make one shimmy like the day Paris Hilton gained access to her trust fund. ‘North American Scum’? Yeah, there’s irony, but much of what’s said is part comic, part earnest. What about when he states “pop culture’s the only thing left” (Warhol)? That “he’s not even playing the same game as his idols” (damn, that’s some of that Wittgensteinian word game action for y’all). Heck, even when I surreptitiously asked him why LCD Soundsystem was so good, a little joke I might add, he stated that it’s his “exuberant youth”! BAM! We all know the guy’s like 37 years of age. That’s some of that Socratic biz right there. Equivocation is key here dear reader, so take what follows with a pinch of salt and a wry smile, for these are the tools of the contemporary world. Just ask the guys from nu/new/neu rave bible Super Super.

As you probably already know, James Murphy, alongside Tim Goldsworthy, is the juggernaut behind DFA Records. When the label dropped like a leather-clad ton of disco bricks on the scene, there was devastation. DFA was the label that, way back in 2002, was at the forefront of the disco/electro/funk fusion thang that was setting dance emporiums and hipster havens the world over alight. There were a crew of these guys from around the world doing a similar thing, and they were all connected – heck, one would even go as far to say they were friends. From Paris (Black Strobe) to London (Trevor Jackson) and New York (Morgan Geist) to Switzerland (Robi Insinna), they were doing it… and often together. The first DFA 12”, ‘House Of Jealous Lovers’ by The Rapture, was released in the UK on Trevor’s Output label with a remix by Morgan Geist. Tight. Each one had their sound down, and naturally, LCD being from NY, disco was it. But what about now? What’s the scene like? Is it coming back? “Hell yeah! Rub ‘n’ Tug are doing their thing. Tim Sweeney’s Beats In Space (website/radio station), Ordinary Monkey parties, Rong Records. It’s just a really nice time to be in New York and watch the DJ throw a party. When I started DJing in Europe, I used to think ‘Wow it’s really amazing the crowd you get in Europe’, New York’s okay, but you’d have to put in a lot of work especially for the DFA parties. It was like working uphill. Now it’s just not the case. It’s my favourite place to DJ in the world now.” Wow. Well that’s quite a change from the acquired wisdom that ‘NY Till I Die’ was the mantra reserved for those who had never ventured beyond Brooklyn. What inspired the change? “The crowd’s are great man, you can pretty much play anything. Yeah it has to be good, but no-one gets uptight ‘cause you’re playing disco or if you’re playing this or that.” 


Nothing sounds better. A return to form for the city that never sleeps, from Levan to Bowie this was the credo, but for the past few years NY fell off the map and the proverbial. There must have been something that prompted the revival? “Things are usually in the air so it’s pretty hard to say where the changes are from. I think maybe people remembered where it was, that it wasn’t some sort of second rate dance city but it’s actually New York, where disco was born and stuff like that. I think people like Rub ‘n’ Tug were the people who kept it going when it was thin you know?” Boom! Disco infiltrates once again. But is this the sound that’s making NY bounce? “Hell yeah. A proper one. A deep one. You can play anything and that’s why it’s good. It’s that disco sound ‘cause it challenges everybody. You can play acid house, you could play some techno, you could play some mid 80s stuff, you can kind of go anywhere with it and that’s why we like it.” But what about the European staples? “Oh we can even get some minimal in there! Keep the kids unhappy… I mean happy.” Okay, we all know (don’t we?) that minimal’s been on its way out for more than a minute now. “Minimal seems to be a really big thing but it’s also been the whipping boy. Everyone wants to take pot shots at minimal and new rave. People are lovin’ to get mad at that. I hereby state that we (LCD Soundsystem) are minimal new rave.” NME, eat your heart out.


Stop. Before you venture out to pick up your oversized Cassette Playa fluoro tee with the incredibly sharp font, remember: pinch of salt.


Let us be serious for a moment. Over the past year there’s been a noticeable lack of DFA releases on the racks of records stores, but with good reason. Both of the protagonists of this particular project have grown up somewhat from the heady days of 2002 with James Murphy getting married and working on material for his baby LCD, but what of Tim Goldsworthy? “LCD’s my baby, but Tim got his baby. No literally, he had a baby. So he’s pretty busy. Hell, he has grey hair. I’ve got grey hair from touring but he’s got a baby and came back three weeks later with grey hair and we were all laughing at him.” Progeny aside, what’s happening with DFA? Is it slowing down? One would assume so, but as James is a self-confessed workaholic who’s quoted as saying he’s only got two speeds: ‘Stop and 100 miles-an-hour’. And as Tim’s work ethic is far from lax, family ties seem not to have slowed them down an iota. “Tim’s been working on the 11 Hands stuff, his own stuff, his own remixes… He set up another studio which is great. We’re branching out, we’re gonna take over. He’s finishing the next Cut Copy record at the moment.” As for James? “During this tour I intend to finish off a bunch of dance 12”s. Hell, I’m looking forward to making some 12”s, ‘the old fashioned way’. Pressing them and hand engraving them all on a wax spool.” Old school, time consuming, but invariably worth it. 


The new LCD album ‘The Sound Of Silver’ is something brilliant, like a new take on the debut. The standout track, no matter how tantalising the thought of ‘North American Scum’ may be, is the funk-lick-clad ‘Us Vs Them’. A track so infectious, one may unwittingly construe it as an ideological rebellion track. This is, as always, quite possibly a mistake. “’Us Vs Them’ is about the gesturing that goes on in rock which is usually pretty cheap y’know. Like ‘screw the man’, but you know it’s not deep, but vacant. Nobody’s screwing the man. It’s just a cheap way of getting the kids all riled up. So it’s more just a song about how that’s just empty and banal y’know. There’s no ‘You and me against the world’ because we are the world.” Yep, we are the world, we are the children… Wait a minute. Wasn’t that just politically potent phenomological theorem blended with culturally contemporary observation? By George, I think it was! Damn. Perhaps my ex was right, perhaps it really is all about street philosophy. And disco. And salt.

J Saintil, One Week to Live, March 2007