E-Mail This Article to a Friend Heads or tails LCD Soundsystem’s big mainstream gamble BY TONY WARE
	Related Links   LCD Soundsystem's official Web site DFA Records' official Web site

Central to Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the title characters’ ongoing run of luck as they flip a coin that keeps coming up heads. Unaware of any deeper implications, the hapless duo are, for a time, elated by their statistical triumph. For James Murphy — half of the NYC production duo the DFA (with Tim Goldsworthy) and the man behind LCD Soundsystem, whose debut full-length Capitol released on February 15 — there’s a humbling lesson to be learned from Stoppard’s play.

"I think DFA has had a really good run," he says from his NYC office. "I just can’t trust it to continue. I always keep that in mind — that there could be a backlash. But it’s not going to stop me. I’m putting my album out there knowing there might be a backlash." In other words, this time the coin might not come up heads. So far, DFA Records — Murphy, Tim Goldsworthy, and label manager Jonathan Galkin — has garnered critical acclaim for all of the limited-edition 12-inch singles it’s released since forming in 2001. Featuring LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture, the Juan MacLean, Black Dice, J.O.Y., and Pixeltan, those singles have created a movement or at least a hip subgenre by marrying post-punk new wave to the incessant dance pump of Chicago house.

Patterned after successful indies like Factory, 99, Trax, and the old Touch and Go — "labels that found a niche and beat the shit out of it," as Murphy puts it — DFA Records has singlemindedly promoted a monolithic, mutant disco æsthetic. Its biggest success has been the NYC band the Rapture, who gave a major boost to the label’s profile with the yelping, fractured funk of "House of Jealous Lovers" before releasing the dance-punk touchstone Echoes (Strummer/Universal) in 2003. But Murphy views the story of the Rapture as a cautionary tale. And he sees his leap to a major label as a trial by fire for DFA, one he’d rather spare other artists on the label. "When the Rapture got bigger, we realized we weren’t in a position to support them. When people call themselves an independent label, I usually roll my eyes. But we were so independent that we couldn’t press enough copies of their CDs. We didn’t want to cripple them. So together we started looking for a solution."

Murphy was drawn to EMI/Capitol, in part because of the patience the conglomerate had shown with Radiohead, who were given the freedom to evolve outside the limitations of commercial considerations. The Rapture, however, chose Universal, and as a result, they parted ways with the DFA. Having since seen the Rapture not get the attention he feels they deserve, Murphy went with what had been his initial gut feeling when it came time to find a home for LCD Soundsystem, a solo studio effort that will be interpreted by what he calls the "LCD cover band" on tour. Prior to recording the nine-track album, he had released five LCD singles — including DFA’s second most famous release, the name-dropping "Losing My Edge" — that have now been collected on a second "bonus" CD included in the Capitol release. The recordings have drawn comparisons variously with Can, the Fall, ESG, Brian Eno, and Gang of Four. To his credit, Murphy is issuing no denials. "I really don’t like bands who are compared to someone and then reply, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard that before.’ I’m not ashamed to embrace my inspirations — the music that pushes me to make the best records I can. Pick up Hunky Dory and you hear Bowie trying to be the Velvet Underground on ‘Queen Bitch.’ Or listen to the Fall trying to be Can on ‘I Am Damo Suzuki.’ I see no shame in admitting what’s inspired me."

He’s equally forthcoming about the structural and conceptual inspirations from the LP era that fed into LCD Soundsystem, like the placement of the Another Green World–era Eno-esque "Great Release" as what he refers to as the album’s "erasing and complicating" last track. For Murphy, the effect is akin to the Violent Femmes’ moody and reflective "Good Feeling," a track that topped off the otherwise revved up and snotty homonymous Femmes debut. Don’t expect him to resort to an easily digested, monochromatic sound in order to turn LCD Soundsystem into the kind of narrow lifestyle pitch that major labels love to market.

All the same, his decision to make the leap to a major is a gamble that may create a backlash among DFA fanatics. But Murphy — who has plenty of production work to fall back on — has expectations that are both modest and realistic. "I like people who fuck up. Like Lou Reed. Because if Reed hadn’t made some horrible Broadway record [Transformer], we wouldn’t have ‘Perfect Day.’ "