Related: The new short film about James Murphy’s DFA Records, “Too Old to Be New, Too New to Be Classic”.
James Murphy has been talking about working with Yeah Yeah Yeahs for a while, and now here is an oh-so-brief video of him tinkering with a wicked synth line in London’s Benge Studios with YYY guitarist Nick Zinner.
"It was about a hypersensitive high school kid being pretentious and annoying, and it was made a by a hypersensitive high school kid being pretentious and annoying. I watched a lot of Fellini in my bedroom. And there was also that weird wave of super-mannered 80s movies, like The Chocolate War, where one person would be standing really close to the camera looking off in the distance and the other person would be 12 feet behind them looking in a different direction. There would be a big blue light cast across the whole thing, and they’d say things like, ‘Next year’s not going to be the same, man,’ and the other guy would be like, ‘I know. But are we going to be the same?’ All that kind of crap. That was a real thing."
— James Murphy on the VHS movie he made as a teenager. He’ll get a chance to better that effort when he directs a short film early next year— read our interview with him about the upcoming project here.
"You know how you think you’re going to meet André and he’s going to be totally cool? He’s actually way cooler. I was pretty awestruck. And I was really stunned at how good Damon and André are as technical musicians. Far better than me. They could both sit down and play the piano really well, and I was just like, ‘Um, I can hit stuff.’"
— James Murphy talks to us about collaborating with Damon Albarn and André 3000.
"I’ve been working on some design stuff, some architecture stuff, some coffee stuff. I want to be better at cooking. I want to learn how to make an automatic watch— you know, like little watches that have lots of moving springs, I’d love to know more about how they’re made and see if I can make one, just one. I’m trying to learn as much as I can about things I don’t know anything about for the next few years."
— James Murphy speaks on his life post-LCD Soundsystem. (He’s been in the studio with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, too.)
James Murphy gets grilled by Stephen Colbert about the end of LCD Soundsystem. Click here for the band’s “Colbert Report” performance.
"Since we know we’re not gonna do another record I feel freer to do the biggest shit I possibly can. Like, ‘Fuck it, we should play Madison Square Garden.’ Putting an end to it frees me up to have fun; it’s like knowing your mortality."
— James Murphy talked to us about putting LCD Soundsystem to rest at last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival.
