RÓISÍN MURPHY:
IN TOTAL CONTROL

We catch the busy mother and venerable music maker in her native Ireland, relaxing in the quiet cottage she retreats to when not soaking up the sun in Ibiza. The multidisciplinary artist dives deep for the mag, reminiscing about the UK music scenes that saved her, discussing her metaphysical process when working with producers and detailing continued plans for her absolute dance hit Róisín Machine. “Putting out music in that time actually turned out to be very beautiful in a way,” Murphy says of the 2020 album. “Because people really needed music.”

BUDS: We saw that you just started back with your first live shows in a while.

MURPHY: Yeah. That was quite exciting. It went really well – super well. Didn't have much problem with the COVID thing. Most of the tour was sold out at first. It was like a 10% dropout rate across it. In other tours, there was a 30% drop out. Either my fans are more healthy or they're just fucking more determined.

BUDS: That's great. How did it feel being back on stage? It had been about two years since your last show?

MURPHY: Not quite two years. It was really just days before everything was locked down, the last gig.

BUDS: You would have presumably kept touring if you could have at that time…

MURPHY: That tour that we've just done, we had that booked for pretty soon after that. I'm sure we would have been doing stuff in the summer. I was putting out records and things. It would have been quite a busy time. I did miss it, but I also gained something from it. I gained better perspective, time to think about the future and the way I want me life to be, not just the way I want me career to be. I think most people are like that. You think, why do I work and what is it that I'm trying to achieve, exactly? I don't think people want to go along anymore. They want to know where they're going. That's certainly the case for me. I'm not going to just keep stepping and without thinking about the future. I'm going to start thinking about that. I have already… retirement. 

BUDS: Oh no, is Róisín Murphy going to retire?

MURPHY: I'm going to have the most glorious retirement. That's what I want.

BUDS: You deserve it for sure, but please don't leave us. We saw you've been working on a new record with DJ Koze. Is that still in the works?

MURPHY: Yeah. It's not far off. It could get tossed out the window, who knows, we'll see… It isn't really about retirement at the moment, but it's more about, what is it that I want me creativity to enable me to do? And I need complete freedom now. Anything could actually happen. I need total control over what it is I'm doing and not doing. Therefore you have to sort of take stock and go, okay, how many gigs do you really want to do a year? Do you want to make a film? Do you want to act, do you want to run your own company? Do you want to run everything yourself? All of those questions come up, in times when you're not so busy that you haven't got time to think. I think the next phase might actually be the most interesting, for me anyway, but it does have to go to a point of retirement – at say around 60 – where it's really going great.

BUDS: You've kind of dabbled a little bit in all those things you were just mentioning, directing, etc. Is there anything in that that you particularly like?

MURPHY: I do love the whole process of film and I'm fascinated with performances out of other people and working with other people. That would be interesting. To try and draw that energy out of other people and be there to witness it, is just a beautiful thing. Or, to help bring it out of other performances, other performers. I’d love to do that. I've got a burning ambition to do it really and to tell stories in different ways. I'm very visual and I'm not afraid of a bit of hard work, so let's see.

BUDS: You are very visual. We're so grateful to Braulio Amado for the connection here. He’s just incredible. We were curious about what that collaboration has been like. It feels like a big collaboration between the two of you.

MURPHY: It's been long. He did Maurice Fulton as well. And then all through this period, Róisín Machine, starting “Narcissus” and everything. He's one of the easiest people I've ever worked with on any platform in any part of what I do. He is really driven and I can give him something in a day and the next day, he's got like five ideas for me that are all brilliant. It's so easy to just go, “Yeah, something more like this.” And then he goes there and… he's a virtuoso graphic designer, that’s what he is. He is truly a virtuoso. He can use any format and manipulate it to this degree of sublime beauty. You couldn't keep him down. Even if you sort of put him into a cell, he'd somehow make a visual in there, even if he had no tools. I don't know… I'm not going to go down that road. 

BUDS: We love the photoshoot with David [Gomez-Maestre]. He mentioned that you took control with the looks — the silks are amazing.

MURPHY: Yeah, the silks are Sebi’s [Properzi] from back in the day, when they were throwing parties in the nineties. They made those in Bali. They designed them and had this guy paint them up. They’re cool things, yeah. And styling, I thought, well, I'd just be more like myself, so use me old clothes. But I do my own styling guys. I don't let… it's not that I don’t let people dress me, but I'm a good stylist. I'm pretty good.

BUDS: You are. We were so thrilled to know that you were interested in doing that for the shoot and thank you for your time and energy there.

MURPHY: You’re welcome.

BUDS: I flew to San Francisco to see you once after Hairless Toys/Take Her Up to Monto. Easily one of the best shows I've ever seen. And I was just floored the entire time, you were constantly changing masks and looks. It's a show in a way that I'd never seen before – and the fashion, all these crazy looks are such a huge element. 

MURPHY: This last tour I did just last week, I hit that shit out of the park. The outfits are off the scale. It has simplified. It has definitely simplified since then, since San Francisco and that era where it was all just millions of accoutrements and “yokes” as we called them in Ireland, yokes everywhere. Now, it's a little bit simpler again, but still every track has a different kind of look. But it's not quite as complicated as it was. There's no glass, things like that. Now, it's just simple, a lot of block coloring. And this super neon green-y thing that I wear that kind of ties the whole thing together. I was literally running around, looking for shoes and anything really, the day before I had to be ready. So, it's madness. It only ever falls into place on the day of the first gig to be honest. It's just gathering, gathering, squirreling away. Oh, “I'll take that. I'll take that. That might work. That might work, that might work.” But how the whole system works together only really sort of snaps into place when you really need it to. So you're jumping off a cliff a bit in the beginning. 

I think people look at me and they might think, “That choreographer's amazing” or “Whoever dressed her is brilliant” or “The art direction is amazing, whoever made those projections or sourced that…” It’s all me! But because I'm blonde and that, I don't think people can really get their heads around it, but it is a full time job. That's why I think about it, you know? How much energy? I'm really going to have to think about it. It's so much energy but it is so amazing when it all just falls into place.

BUDS: Oh, absolutely. A true show. There's something about the process of changing things that feels really casual. Very intimate. People can watch you putting new things on.

MURPHY: Because it is casual. It's not me standing in a dance studio for seven weeks learning moves and then somebody gay, like you guys, comes in going “Right, this is what you’re wearing now!” It’s just not like that! It’s me in a little studio with my band, not doing any production rehearsals at all, but grabbing these green trousers, getting this, getting that. And also all the other sort of background that's going into sourcing the projections, what's on the screens and telling the lighting guy to stop using so much color. I'm really involved in every single part of it. I'm saying that now, and if anything goes wrong, then it's me responsible as well. It's funny that people think that other people do those things for me, but they don't.

The band, and we're talking about the live show here, the band is my everything. And the guy that works with me on the [live] music. If that's not right – and it’s the same with the records – if the music's not right, I can't build anything visually off of it. So, they are the people I depend on the most, the music people.

BUDS: And what's that process like?

MURPHY: Róisín Machine is something that I've made with Parrot, who I've known since I was a teenager and “Simulation” is on there and we made that 12, 15 years ago or something. So, it's been going on a long time, the sort of build of making this record. But once we got a deal for it, we snapped in. It was only a few months to finish it.

BUDS: It certainly arrived at a masterful place.

MURPHY: It did. But this is the way I'm working now all the time, there's quite a few different music projects always going on at the same time. The only problem I have, actually, is scheduling, ‘cause I have so much work that I've been doing. And just giving space. I want to give space to Róisín Machine and Crooked Machine, now. They didn't get the chance to be played at clubs or for us to play live — stuff like that. So, it has a little bit of extra life that I'm going to get through until the summer. I think that would be the next time that anybody will hear anything new.

BUDS: It certainly deserves it. It didn't get the opportunity to really be in the clubs. We listen to it all the time. So, the club inside our apartments.

MURPHY: It did work that way for people. It provided the club inside their kitchen or in their living room or their barbecue or whatever. I think it didn't really suffer too much in the sense that putting out music in that time actually turned out to be very beautiful in a way as well because people really needed music. I think people went to music as a kind of friend, as a kind of companion and to help them through this time. And when they went in, they really went into the music. So, I saw this fervent, we need this in our lives-type thing, more than any record I’ve ever put out before. I think people really dived into music and they put their headphones on and they went into another world. And that's what music can do. I just put on some jazz in me mother's garden the other day. The difference in the mood from the whole day, once the music went on, was like medicine, you know?

BUDS: You make music that is so good, not just great for the clubs or for big group settings, but it is very detail oriented and wonderful for headphones.

MURPHY: There’s lyrical content and a story and a narrative, definitely throughout Róisín Machine. There's a very strong narrative and a very strong… I always said it was quite like a building, like a super club you could walk in and you had all these different rooms. There's a sort of spatial awareness in Parrots club music. Like he knows what the room is because he just knows it inside out. He's known it for 30, 40 years. So, he can build it. He can build it in music; the space. You walk in and you're there. That's what's so beautiful about writing on it as well, because the room's already there. The mood's already there. I think I like to work with producers who can do that for me. It’s a bit like opening a door and going into a room. So, what I have to do is almost already there, just to sort of pluck out of the air. That’s what a strong writer-producer can do for me anyway.

BUDS: Do you use cannabis in your writing process?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Róisín takes a long drag from a large joint on camera.

MURPHY: I’m worse than Tricky! Worse than Tricky. It’s dreadful. That's all I want to say.

BUDS: Sure, sure. Better left unsaid.

MURPHY: I don’t stand anywhere, politically on it, that's for sure. I'm not going to make any stand one way or another. Except… legalize, legalize! I always shout that at the end of my gigs.

BUDS: Are there counterculture scenes around the world that inspire you?

MURPHY: I love music, so that goes hand in hand with it. I guess I was lucky enough to be brought up in a way where I was led to believe that I could slip into any kind of stream that I wanted. I could go high, I could go low. I could go in the middle. I could go sideways, left, you know. So, I've tried all the clubs. As a kid I was in Manchester in the late eighties and really into music. I guess that was the first scene that I was involved in. Then I moved to Sheffield, and Sheffield had this incredible underground electronic music scene. Warp Records was there. I got into a relationship with Mark Brydon, who was part founder of FON Studios. I'm talking about the scenes that I was involved in. There was an amazing studio there. There were amazing graphic design people there. Everything was self supporting within the city. 

That studio that Mark owned, they had done a massive deal years before with a big record company. They decided not to spend the money in a big studio in London, but they built a commercial studio in Sheffield, to their specifications. So, with all sorts of first samplers and midi stuff; also a beautiful big SSLR desk and all that – and out of that came all this incredible music. Most of the original Warp stuff was centered around that whole scene. There were parties, three, four nights a week. I think that's what it means to me. A scene is where it's self supporting, it's local, it's supporting DJs — because they're brilliant and they can teach you something new Wednesday to what they teach you on Friday — and the story goes on. It becomes a narrative and it becomes a belief system to some degree, but without the kind of dogma, hopefully, that you might find in other places.

The support system that can spring out of music is, for young people, a really beautiful thing. And it saved me, you know, absolutely saved me; music. It sounds like such a cliche, but I was living in Manchester at 15 without my parents. And when I turned 16, I got my own apartment. So as you can imagine at 15, I went through a lot, but the people around me, who were obsessed with music – that was what drew us together – came in and protected me. And that all got me through. Just being into music got me through things. When I actually got to start making music, kind of accidentally, in Sheffield, it saved me again – it gave me a meaning. It gave me a drive. It gave me ambition and a place to go with myself. And all the friends, the friendships. So now, because I have kind of done so much of that, and loads of live music as well, I’m in this fantastic position. The best part of my life really is now because I just know so many people, so many great people. It's just brilliant to have these connections and it's come from the music scene, basically. 

BUDS: Absolutely. And that bond you can make with somebody when you are even just a fan of music together… 

MURPHY: Yeah, totally. That's what carried me through. Even when it had nothing to do with a career path, it [felt like] we were going somewhere because we were interested in things and because we never stopped going to the record shop and we never stopped going to the gigs and we never stopped going to the clubs and we never stopped looking at the films and trying to read the books… educating ourselves about culture and visual things and beautiful things. Aestheticism, I suppose, can drive you, even not having any end point. Especially when you're young. And it just saved me, totally. And I think there's lots of people that would say the same.

BUDS: Do you think it's very similar today with social media? The way people can see pretty much everything that goes on in the world. Is there a difference in how someone might be saved by music now?

MURPHY: A communal experience cannot be re-created and this has been proven in the last few weeks. People are losing their shit. It's like, wow, to hear music together, to see a live show together. It’s irreplaceable.

BUDS: Did you see anything from the Met Gala that caught your eye?

MURPHY: Didn't see any of it. I was in the middle of my shows and that was a Met Gala all its own… bitch. 

BUDS: There were some people that were a bit more extreme, kind of performative looks. It always felt like you were a pioneer of interesting, more provocative looks.

MURPHY: It has lost an awful lot of shine, the old fashioned thing, hasn't it? In the last few years. And they know it, they know their trouble. Fashion is in a bit of trouble, I think. Because it's oversaturated and can't see the wood for the trees. So many lines, pumping out stuff and then people are just bypassing it and they see something on Facebook and they'll buy that. A nice thing as well, you know, lovely things, like a third of the price. And the people, I think maybe they've gone too far, this is even me saying this guys. I try when I go over the top – and I do go over the top of course – I try to be very real with it and I have a casualness with it too. And also for it to… not to be a mask. To somehow take a mask and make it melt in your hand or make it become transparent by forcing yourself through it. If you're masked, then you must be prepared to be unmasked. If it's a constant mask then it becomes uninteresting. You need to not hide. 

I'm very conscious that that sort of pathology doesn't encroach itself on my performance. So, it's a balance. It's really a balance that it doesn't become something I'm hiding behind. That it actually helps me reveal more, because that's what performance is. It's a revealing. You show them the truth. You don't have to acknowledge that while you're performing, you don't have to be like “I’m telling the truth, I'm telling the truth, I'm telling the truth.” But you do have to be truthful. That's where the balance has gotten all skewy, I think. People can't come out of their bedrooms for three hours until they have their makeup done and their lips done and their eyes done and their face done. It's pathological. They're not seeing what we're seeing. But, the same thing is running through all of culture, this sort of pathological kind of hiding and fear of the revealing of your true self, but that's what art is.

BUDS: It feels like everybody has this avatar more so now than even five or ten years ago.

MURPHY: And then there's the aspects of just piling on the brands. It's just a walking advert for absolutely every movement and every thought and every gesture and every image and every capture… is loaded with so much else; advertising information, mind-melting shite.

BUDS: We love that you are conscious of that and actively push away from it in your performance and your presentation. 

MURPHY: You've got to push away. That's a big part of the energy in creation as well, just acknowledging what I'm not going to do, what I'm trying not to do. A big part of it. So I won't do that. I won't do that and I won’t do that. And then you’re like, what am I left with? Oh, that's revealing to me, what I'm left with.

BUDS: Very inspiring, even for our young magazine to keep that in mind and try to retain art and this idea of “revealing.” Are you using Instagram as a visual source?

MURPHY: Yes, yes. Well, I love Instagram. I love what I see on Instagram. I love who I'm following. And it's inspired me so much over the years, actually. It's really been a massive help in terms of reference on every project since Hairless Toys. I don't mean to advertise it, but I mean, just in general to be able to access imagery, access music, to be able to say to somebody, “Okay, I wanna do something that has this kind of mood.” And then in a second, be able to show them.

BUDS: There's the other side of the coin that it's rich with creativity. So many people are creating all the time and you can find different worlds.

MURPHY: Going back to the fashion thing as well, that's sort of what I wear. I wear people who want to dress me and are young, up and coming people. And that's normally on the internet where I get in contact with these people or they contact me or I see it and I like it. Then we make a relationship. And over the years I wear different pieces from different people that are new and exciting. Now, I wouldn't dream of ringing up Gucci or somebody and saying, “Oh, I'm going on tour…” It's not necessary. It's just not necessary. I might do it to pay bills – different scenario. 

BUDS: Never say never.

MURPHY: No, actually, never say never, but… the point being is that there is so much there to experiment with and play with, with clothes and things that like, it's a wonderland. In my show, I have pieces from Tbilisi, from London, pieces from Germany, Spain, pieces from all over… Australia, Poland. Then it's fun to put it all together and piece it together, because it's like a true, beautiful thing.

BUDS: It's about your eye, putting that stuff together, just like the live show itself, I’m sure.

MURPHY: And again, more relationships, you know, and connections. A network really. In all of the worlds, including fashion, you can get caught up talking shite. You get caught up with, “Oh, you've got to have several intermediate situations before you can get that pair of trousers.” That’s bullshit. 

BUDS: Would you mind talking about your creative relationship with Sebi?

MURPHY: I made Me Senti with Sebi. He and Eddie Stevens made the music on that. And also, you know, deeply involved in the choices of the songs with me because he's Italian and he's my husband… but I'm not married. I wouldn't marry him. I'd never marry any man. No, as my mother says, “Not if they were dipped in gold.” But I love him to bits and I call him me husband and we've got two children. When I was looking for artwork, he found Braulio. We were searching through the internet, looking at the graphic design that had to do with dance music and his stuff for… What's it called?

BUDS: Good Room.

MURPHY: Yeah, Good Room! We found his posters and that was love at first sight. Sebi also helps me with the background projection. He's smart in every way. That beautiful animation that we use a lot of on the screens. He helped us build the One-woman show, which was all about the screens being completely in sync with the music. I had a set of stairs that were made out of screens as well, huge big screens where you could climb into the middle of the screen. He was clever enough to be able to sync up the visuals and the music in a new technical way that's really good. And the lights – also helped us with that. 

BUDS: A rich creative collaborator.

MURPHY: I always put it past him, what I’m wearing, ‘cause he is Italian, you know. He usually tells me to take something off. He's my right hand man. 

BUDS: What do the kids think about the collaboration and outfits and your performances? 

MURPHY: Well, I dunno, they take it for granted. I mean the house that they grew up in is full of it. Full of it. It's stress when it's time to go somewhere and I'm pulling all the stuff out of different areas and that. They sort of scatter and go into the corners and hide. They do something else and try to ignore me. It's the most physical part of my job, with the suitcases and looking after all the rails of clothes; trying things on and lifting things up and moving things around, shaking things out, putting this into that…

So, it gets a bit like, “Oh, get out of mamma's way for this.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.