James Murphy must be having the time of his life. The beefy Brooklynite is one half of DFA, the in-demand producers who transformed The Rapture from skronky art-punks into a relevant-sounding concern. Now, as LCD Soundsystem, Murphy mines a similar seam of nervy hedonism and raw punk-funk energy on these two seven-minute-plus dub disco anthems that would bring the house down were it not for Murphy’s neurotic David Byrne-style monologues.
“I was there,” he mumbles disingenuously over ‘Losing My Edge’’s minimal Casiotone crunch “in 1968 at the first Can show in Cologne”, before going on to namecheck The Sonics, Mantronix, Suicide and the Human League. Dig this record not because it’s fashionable and cool, but because it’s the sound of a major new talent striving – and succeeding – to be original. Respect.
Piers Martin