1. For nearly 10 years, alongside producer/instrumentalist Mark Brydon, Roisin
Murphy was best known as voice of chart breaking, experimental dance duo
Moloko. On the eve of the release of her debut solo album ‘Ruby Blue’, Roisin side-
steps the bullshit and cuts to the chase with SNC’s Ade Bankole, while talking self-
improvements, dancing round the fire and working with Matthew Herbert.
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Photography:AlexisMaryonInterview:AdeBankole
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2. After weeks of chasing Roisin Murphy, through PR company via record label, I
finally track her down at Liverpool Street’s Great Eastern Hotel. She has just finished the
gruelling photo-shoot in an amazing arrangement of clothing ranging from classic ball-gowns
to purely unique cuts only she could pull off. In two days, she flies out to Japan to promote
her debut solo album alongside Matthew Herbert but now, she’s visibly worn out as she
reclines in her seat while sparking-up a Silk Cut.
“I’m very unexcited about music at the moment,” she declares in her distinctly crackly
sounding Irish tones. “I’m very recordshop-phobic right now,” she huffs, as she draws back
another drag of her cigarette. Apart from her poignant looks, her fiery red hair and her impec-
cable sense of style, one of the first things you notice about Murphy is the peculiar way her
speech is occasionally punctuated with a certain brash Northerness.
“I’d love to be around people who could tell me what else is going on cos’ nothing that’s
in the charts or has been bigged does anything for me. My friends in London now are really
varied and not necessarily into music whereas the people I grew up with were obsessed with
it.”
For Roisin the only album that’s recently lived up to its commercial billing was the last
Outkast album, which also is the only record that’s recently influenced her and made her
think about things differently: “Yeah, it was experimental, it was soulful and funky. Apart
from that I get sent stuff from Matthew’s Accidental Records label, I don’t know what any of
it’s called but it’s always brilliant.”
Having worked with the Moloko sound in the past, Matthew Herbert was no stranger to
Roisin’s versatile voice: “I had always loved the ease with which it sat in the textures of the
sounds I work with. To work on ‘Ruby Blue’ struck me as the perfect place to try and mix prop-
er musical charisma with noises not often heard on the radio.”
After receiving and loving Matthew’s 1996’s ‘Ready to Rockit’ EP, a mutual appreciation
developed, which later resulted in the Herbert-reworking of Moloko’s ‘The Flipside’ and ‘Sing
It Back’ on 2002’s ‘Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes’ and ever since a reunion has been
inevitable.
“I have always harboured this wish to work with him again. And it felt very natural to
make it with him because Matthew makes things seem quicker and easier. For me, there are
no real differences between this and the Moloko work. At this point, after five records, I see
it as all part of one big thing. It’s not about any one record, it’s about the fact that I’m still
here, still experimenting.
“I sound really pretentious but if I don’t remind myself that it’s a creative journey then
I’ll get mixed up with all the other shit. It’s about propelling creativeness. It’s only different
because Matthew’s a different entity to working with Mark but then again it’s different to
anything that Matthew himself has done as well because we’ve influenced each other. It was
just very natural.”
Born in Arklow-Ireland, Roisin’s music education started at home with her family of pub-
singers who she playfully admits “weren’t the greatest”, but it was this and following her
parents every Sunday to see her Uncle Jim play in his various jazz bands and trios that she
recalls as her earliest musical influences. “Uncle Jim was a virtuoso, an all-round great jazz
musician.”
Her family’s emigration to Manchester, then aged 12, landed her there against the back-
drop of the whole ‘Madchester/Acid house’ scene kicking-off. “I suppose the first bands I got
into were Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Big Black etc. I was a bit
of an outcast at school due to being a bit different, but I was a bit of an outcast in Ireland
anyway so it wasn’t a result of my Irishness that singled me out in Manchester, more my
cockiness or what ’ave yuh.
“When I was about 16 I stopped hanging out with people from school and hooked up with
mostly older guys who were into music, films and reading. We weren’t into the dangly-indie
music, more American stuff but when it was British it was more avant garde arty. I’d go and
see these bands at least twice a week. That’s how it was back then.
“The whole acid house scene got me involved in dance music, which was about 88/89.
Through dance music I got led into black music cos’ when I moved to Sheffield all the DJ’s
were mixing up R’n’B, soul, old funk with house music and plinky-plonky house music.”
Plinky-plonky house music? “Yeah, it was a very specialist Sheffield-genre like Forge
Master and the stuff that came out on Warp. Since then my main way of absorbing music is
through dancing to it. I don’t really go to any good parties anymore cos’ London’s rubbish! But
my favourite times are when I know the DJ and I can have a very communicative vibe with him
or her. I’m very much a party-starter. That’s always kind of been my role.”
If Roisin counts herself as being a bit different then Matthew Herbert – a self-confessed
loather of drum machines – is also by nature of his experimental disposition inevitably
different. Just listen to the song ‘Night Of The Dancing Flame’ which starts off with a Jungle
Book elephant/Brass sounding (according to Herbert) procession very much in a 30’s Cab
Calloway style. She laughs: “I can see where he’s coming from and why he described it like
that. Actually the brass was the last thing to go on that song.”
Roisin wrote ‘Night Of The Dancing Flame’ after a trip to Ibiza, “I shouldn’t mention
Ibiza again but will do!” she laughs off, almost ashamedly. “We were on a beach in Northern
Ibiza, the name escapes me right now, but there’s this hippee festival every full moon in the
summer. It was quite sleazy actually.”
“There were all these vaseline-clad girls dancing round a fire and these sleazy guru-like
older men playing bongos and watching on. Which is where the line, The orgy of the free,
comes from. It’s suppose to be ironic because the observation was that the girls were danc-
ing through this idea of freedom, but they weren’t really free at all. It was an amazing thing
to see, though - the image of heavily vaselined-skin against the firelight. And then they put a
circular lamp/sheet thing around the girls and the fire so you could only see the shadows
dancing. Visually, it was an incredible feast but still a bit distressing.”
Before making ‘Ruby Blue’, the studio Mark and Roisin had together as Moloko disbanded
and all the gear was taken on tour and Mark subsequently went on to build his own studio,
which has just now been finished: “If I had waited for Mark’s studio to finish, I’d have just
started to record the album now so I just recorded it in down-time. I literally delivered the
album – finished – to the record company before they had a chance to ask me what I was
doing next.
“After writing the first few songs, I had no idea it was going to be a solo album but I did
phone up Matthew and said, look, I’ve finally got a spare minute and I want to do this tune
with you, meet me, let’s discuss this. So the next week we went into the studio, tried it, it
worked and it just carried on from there.”
Roisin confesses that before going to work with Matthew, she had in the back of her head
the memory of working with Handsome Boy Modelling School a few years ago on their album
‘So...How’s Your Girl?’ It was an experience that convinced her that not only could she work
with other people and try new things, but she could do it well.
“I just got sent the loop for the single ‘The Truth’ (also featuring J-Live), which just res-
onated with me. I didn’t ask anybody about it, just went home and wrote the song on 4-track
then landed in America, went straight to their studio, put it down and they were blown away.
I was so nervous!”
I mention to Roisin that the line that resonates with me the most on ‘Ruby Blue’ is the
question, ‘How could there be such a thing as beautifully flawed?’, on the soothing ballad
‘Through Time’. The idea of something being so perfect it’s unbelievable but that only when
you begin to find imperfections, then that something begins to feel real.
“As an artist, I’m into improvements. It’s a line that resonates across a few meanings.
As a lyricist, I try to achieve this. I try to be a bit dual-edged about my lyrics. I think that’s
what being lyrical is. It takes a certain amount of distance from yourself to recognise those
flaws and that happens through time and thankfully I’ve had time and been given space to
make records. The record company never come in on a session. It’s quite funny, most people I
work with are always like 'Where’s your record company?' 'Where are they?' They have always
left me to get on with it. No-one has ever, ever told me what to do.”
Murphy speaks with such a self-assurance and a certain amount of yes, dare I say it,
cockiness that you believe her totally when she tells you she’s never compromised on her
music.
“I don’t really know what direction I’m going in or what I’ll do next. Moloko as a band is
on ice at the moment. I don’t know what’s going to happen, it depends on a multitude of
things but I would like to think we’d do something again but if not I’d keep going.”
“No matter how big I was, I would never go for that cherry-picking thing of getting the
latest and greatest production. With Matthew it was just a natural thing. I mean this record
was made in one little room. All the brass was done in there and we didn’t even have a vocal
booth!”
And what about being the voice of a jazz big band? “I’ve considered it but I think it
would be a bit cheesy right now, maybe it’s one for my older years. There’s a lot of jazziness
about right now and not enough jazz. Besides, I’d need to learn more about live music to do
jazz. I never really liked it when I was young, I didn’t have a clue what was going on but I’m
slowly getting into it. I’ve always enjoyed the jazz score of The Man with the Golden Arm with
Frank Sinatra as this smackhead jazz drummer!”
While the future for Roisin is certainly looking bright, its direction is not so straight-
forward. Whatever her next move might be in the future, from talking to her I sense Roisin’s
biggest desire is to be acknowledged and appreciated in the present. ‘Ruby Blue’ is Roisin’s
present. It’s a platform for her versatility. It’s a platform for her amazingly unique sound. A
sound that can be both bitter and sweet, both positively uplifting and curiously noir. Let’s
skip the superlatives and just congratulate her on ‘Ruby Blue’, the boldest move of her self-
named creative journey.
‘Ruby Blue’ is out on Echo Records May, 2005.
A series of large-scale portraits of Roisin by artist Simon Henwood will be
exhibited at the Hospital in London, March 2005.
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