James Murphy

When I want to DJ what I think to be the best-sounding place in the world, I go to this place in Sapporo, Japan, called Precious Hall, which has kind of a custom sound system with a much lower ceiling and a smaller room.

Titles are relatively arbitrary to me; they take on meanings that aren't really my meanings. 'Sound Of Silver' was just, like, I made the studio silver, and I wanted the record to sound 'more silver.'

'Somebody's Calling Me' was written in my sleep, and the original was just the piano and the beat and the singing.

To me, the band is like one of my homes, in fact. It's not like, 'I've got to get out of this band. I've got to go home.' This band is home in a lot of ways. It's my closest friends; it's a place where I really feel comfortable and happy.

I am kind of, by definition, a hipster.

It's strangely energizing to have people who don't make music themselves take potshots at you from the Internet.

I write songs all the time. Sometimes they're just weird songs I sing while changing a baby, or songs about annoying things that I sing to myself, or to friends while sitting at a bar, or about Christmas or New York.

I actually really love people.

I'm a very self-conscious person.

Sound sounds are terrible in the city, but it's great to listen and to walk and listen to people talk to each other. There are birds. You hear spring. I like listening to the city.

When I was a kid, when the Walkman came out, I was sold. I listened to music 24 hours a day.

Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys gave me a present: it's a boombox with a keyboard and a beatbox in it. You can't make that up.

Producing is always really hard, and you can never tell who's going to be easy to get along with and who's going to be difficult.

I'm really focused and obsessed with writing things that are specific. I don't like big rock lyrics - I find them infuriating.

DJing is really, really pleasant. It's like having people over and making hors d'oeuvres.

You can't be afraid to embarrass yourself sometimes.

I actually want to write a treatise in defence of pretension. I think the word 'pretension' has become like the word 'ironic' - just this catch-all term to distance people from interesting experiences and cultural engagement and possible embarrassment.

There are some people who are just plain great at making music. That's not who I am.

I suppose what happened is that I spent my whole life wanting to be cool but eventually came to recognise the mechanism of how coolness works. So it's not really that I don't want to be cool anymore - it's more like I've come to realise that coolness doesn't exist the way I once assumed.

You can buy $20,000 speakers, but put them in a room that's not right, and it sounds terrible. If you buy $20 speakers and put them in a room that's tuned right, it'll sound great.

I have an interest in everything, but I don't have an interest in starting new careers.

I don't see myself as necessarily a very creative person. I'm a technical guy.

One of my favorite photographers is Ruvan Wijesooriya, who takes most of the LCD photos. His work is incredibly colloquial and raw.

I'm generally a very optimistic guy.

I like clever lyrics, funny lyrics, dumb lyrics. I can never put my finger on what I like about them.

There's a difference between a cheap lie and a beautiful lie.

In my experience, people looking for progress aren't actually looking to move things forward. They're looking to be perceived in a certain way: as a forward thinker. It's about vanity rather than any altruistic motives for the art.

I don't think I've ever made a claim to startling originality.

My personality is based on an anonymity and failure. Failure and anonymity, those are my strengths - superiority from below.

When given the opportunity to fail myself or fail someone else, I choose to fail myself.

After being in a 'professional rock ensemble,' there's a great joy in making music with friends, without any release plan.

A lot of the time, you compromise., which is fine - it's part of not being totally insane.

I've been to Manchester enough to know it's a real place. It's not Factory Records and the Smiths bicycling around. I get it. It's a modern city.

I'm kind of stunned by hip-hop and R&B's embrace of what is essentially early-to-mid-Nineties Euro pop.

I know it seems like LCD Soundsystem sold millions and millions of records, but we didn't. I'm not a wealthy person.

I think I'm designed to regret everything.

I can be staggeringly evangelical. That's just my personality.

When Andy Kaufman performed, he was not just trying to be funny. He was playing with the notion of what it means to try to be funny, of what it means to be an audience expecting somebody to be funny. He was doing a dance and playing a game.

I don't write off silly pop people at all, because you never know where they're coming from.

Warhol had resonance because it was high art and low art. And you could argue about it endlessly.

Anything that's resolvable is boring, musically. And if it's too chaotic, you don't feel tension; it's chaos.

With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.

I miss producing. I hate it when I do it, but I love it.

The Fall was super powerful to me because of their covers. They were intimidating. I bought 'This Nation's Saving Grace' when it came out in 1985, and there was something about it that made me nervous. It terrified me.

I don't have a TV, and I don't have a radio.

I've watched too many artists in my life forget how good the things they used to do were.

Subway Symphony is a little idea I had to change the sound of the subway turnstiles into different pieces of music, depending on what station you're entering.

I think that not being all that overwhelmed by good reviews is a luxury. I'm like a rich person who says he doesn't care about money.

Making 'Sound of Silver' was very emotional at times, where I just hated making that record.

Songs are songs, and to reduce them is to waste them.