Roísín Murphy

“From a very young age, I was told you create the way you are, that you don't need to be what other people think you should be.”

Stalactite cool. Peacock plumed. Dance eccentric. That’s the common view of Roísín Murphy. However, truth, slippery fellow that he is, doesn’t reside in such terms alone. AU takes a journey to the heart of the marvelously multifaceted ‘RM’.

It was all going so well. Second solo album ‘Overpowered’ was grabbing critical praise as greedily as a pervert pilfers knickers off a washing line. The tour was tearing through Europe and then Moscow happened.

“I got a bit over excited on stage and I hit my head on a chair and split my eyebrow open. I had to come home and have it treated. It was a bit sore, I’ve still got a little bandage but they’ve taken the stitches out and I think it’s going to be okay.”

Typical of the feisty Murphy to play down what was by initial accounts a severe injury to her eye socket. Still those stitches and some re-jigged gigs aside, she’s now fully recovered.

“We’ve been back touring for a while now. We’ve finished Europe and started in England a couple of nights ago. I like rolling into a town with a gang of people and feeling like a teenager again. Touring, performing, it’s been fun; the best part of the job.”

Be it as siren songstress in Moloko or solo dance diva, Murphy has always revelled in performance, flaunting it on stage, or on video, sporting outrageous, nay bonkers outfits, a true disco glamour-puss in overdrive.

“I love fashion, I love dressing up. I’m a very expressive performer. I’ll take anything available to help me express myself and what I’m trying to say because I can’t just say it in words. As a result, I’m going to try and do it in every other way possible. So I figure it out for myself. I think that’s what the creative process is about. I take an awful lot of joy in that part of it. It may not seem the most mainstream way of doing things, but if you took that away from me, then it would bore me and I wouldn’t want to do it.”

This individualist approach, the refusal to take the obvious path has seen her tarred time-and-again with terms such as eccentric and stubborn.

“They say a lot of things, because I don’t take any shit that means I’m really hard. Of course I don’t take any shit, but that’s not what I’m all about. In reality I’m quite sensitive as well and sweet natured. But in my opinion, I’m not here to sell myself; it’s the record that’s brilliant.”

That record is ‘Overpowered’, an album that is at once sleek and futuristic whilst channelling dance history in its forays into pure Studio 54 disco and mesmeric house. “I recognised that I am embraced by and embrace dance culture so I really wanted to really nail down those references” states Murphy. More than this, it’s a record that runs the gamut of her personal experiences, chronicling her relationship with music, her dance epiphany.

“I was in Manchester from the age of twelve. When my family first moved over from the south of Ireland (Arklow) I was into very hardcore rock, Sonic Youth, Big Black and that kind of thing and then, when I was about sixteen, it all started to kick-off in Manchester. ‘Voodoo Ray’ (A Guy Called Gerald’s iconic house track) was the big tune. I remember my brother bringing that home and playing it over and over. I started going to nightclubs, well, whenever I could get in! And that’s when I really got into dance. It’s the music I feel most in touch with. When I go out to nightclubs I don’t want to be chatting; I just want to dance from the minute I get there until the break of dawn. I love going out to the disco and I find dancing very important.”

Continue to page 2

Issue #51 - I Told You This Would Be A Good Issue

Featuring Biffy Clyro, Of Montreal, Duke Special, Frightened Rabbit, Cold War Kids, Jay Reatard, Pat Mills, and more.