With a gait that’s equal parts disco stomp and cocky rock swagger, weird is the way of James Murphy’s walk. Murphy, who sings and plays virtually everything on LCD Soundsystem’s debut full-length, is no ordinary frontman. As half of the New York production team DFA, he’s honed his studio skills by defining, however inadvertently, dance punk. But forget about the medium, as well as the message, best summed up by the title of an early LCD Soundsystem 12-inch: “Yeah” (included here on a bonus disc of early singles). Murphy doesn’t get by on grooves alone, and like a supermodel with a B.A., he’s out to prove his depth. You can dance to almost anything here, but between breaths, you’ll marvel at his control and the way each sound pops like a primary color. Rhythm track “Too Much Love” holds steadfast, its layers never turning to mush. “Tribulations” loses nothing when its arpeggiated bass line settles down to a murmur midway through the song. The ebb and flow within tracks parallels the album’s construction; the sleepy “Dear Prudence” revamp “Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up” is the mayhem’s midpoint, and piano ballad “Great Release” wraps it up. After such stunning sound for sound’s sake, the simple beauty of the album’s final moment feels redundant.

MAGNET reached Murphy at his home in Brooklyn shortly before he left for a European tour.

How will you translate the album into a live setting?
Great. A bunch of the record’s songs we already play. Some other songs, I don’t think we’ll play right now. The two slower, quieter songs. I like designing things for their format: making seven-inches that sound like seven-inches, making dance 12-inches that sound like dance 12-inches, making albums that sound like albums, making live bands that sound like live bands. At the moment, to introduce songs like that into the types of shows we play just wouldn’t work. But there may come a point where it’s not a crass, horrible thing to play more songs for people who have come to see you.

Is there a science to the format-specific attitude you mentioned?
If there is, it’s a pretty soft science. But I think it’s a good thing to think about because people just do things for really terrible reasons without really thinking about them. People make 12-inches because it’s hip for a rock band to make a 12-inch with some horrendous remix. And that design will come from a label, no matter how small: “You should get a remix and you should put out a 12-inch.” As a band you’re like, “Uh, OK,” because you don’t have a methodology in place to address a question like that. It’s a new question. But these are things I think about because I run a label. If you’re going to make a 12-inch there are two ways to do it. One of them is you make a 12-inch because it’s a single, it’s a dance song. It sounds better on a 12-inch, it’s for that world, it makes sense. The other is that you’ve made something that you want to put out very singularly. Like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” or the Smiths singles.

When you started releasing 12-inches with “Losing My Edge,” was it part of your vision that one day you’d put out an album that would sound like an album?
No, it was pretty much one thing at a time. I’d been obsessed with EPs for a while. I really liked four-song EPs, like the first release from artists being EPs, like the first Swans EP and the first Gang Of Four EP. The EP is a great way to put out a small amount of music that you could really keep the quality up and make it known what you sounded like. But then I got into dance music and I aimed to make a 12-inch that played the role of a dance 12-inch and that played the role of the “Love Will Tear Us Apart” 12-inch and that played the role of the EP. I mean, not that I thought all that specifically about this before doing things. I was making music regularly, I just wasn’t releasing anything. And then I made “Beat Connection,” which was a total idea. I just wanted to have a song that had nothing but drums and then I started fooling around with vocals and then started adding everything else at the song’s conclusion. I didn’t have a b-side for it for a year. I kept making songs and rejecting them. And then I made “Losing My Edge” in probably two days and was like, “OK, this makes sense as a b-side for ‘Beat Connection.’” That was supposed to be a b-side. At the very last moment, [DFA partner Tim Goldsworthy] and I were like, “Eh, flip it.”

I wanted to talk about “Losing My Edge.” I’m sure you’re sick of it by now. I mean, are you sick of the album now? You’ve been making it for three years, right?
No, I made it in three weeks. It just took three years to find three weeks to make it. No, I’m not sick of the 12-inch, either. It’s not like I’d listen to them, but every time I hear them, I like ‘em.

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