29/09/2007

New pictures and interview in Blond





These new pictures were taken for the German lifestyle magazine Blond, which also features an interview with Roisin.

She told the magazine about her life in London's Cricklewood with Charlie and Simon. She loves watching The Sopranos and the The Wire. When the interviewer admits to never having seen the series, Roisin gives an indignant rendition of one of the characters: "Yo, what's all up in the game, motherfucker! What, you haven't seen it? Yeeeeah man, this shit is dope! Get it on DVD! It's wicked". She also likes looking at human behaviour from a purely technical perspective: "It's (...) quite cool to look at things like that! Let's make it very robotic!".

Click here to read the interview (in German).
Pictures by Thomas Schweigert (see www.purephotography.de).

Roisin is standing in the way of control

Dance diva Roisin Murphy sizzled at the recording of Transmission with T-Mobile where she did a great cover of Gossip’s Standing In The Way Of Control.

The foxtrel’s efforts from album Overpowered, out October 15, are a favourite with Playlist.

Roisin, 34, turned out a handful of numbers, including single Let Me Know, released October 8. The show can be seen on October 5.

(From today's Daily Star)

28/09/2007

Roisin - the official biography


This is Roisin's mini biography, written by the lady herself. Most of you will already know this from the official site. Now that Amazon published it on their Overpowered page, I was finally able to copy and paste it here for your enjoyment.

AN IRISH ROVER (Introduction)
I've moved around a bit since I was a kid. When I was twelve, my family moved to Manchester from Arklow, a small town in southern Ireland. My family drifted back to Ireland when I was 15; I stayed in Manchester.

I moved to Sheffield at the age of seventeen thinking I would go to Art College. Then I met Mark Brydon and we did some tracks with me kind of 'chatting' lines on them like "Do You Like My Tight Sweater?", "See How It Fits My Body". Moloko was born. It freaked me out when we were asked to sign a six album deal but Mark being ever the pragmatist pointed out that, in the extremely unlikely event that we actually did get to make six albums, something would have had to go very right.

I have lived in London for a few years now. Of course I toured all six albums, mostly around Europe, though occasionally in further flung places like Australia, the US, much of eastern Europe and Russia. I've been around a bit. I can't imagine making a record and not being totally consumed by the process, even though that might be nice. I don't expect I'll ever be completely satisfied. On this record the tracks certainly went from pillar to post, I worked along side some really great people and lots of them. I was always there, writing in Miami, London or Barcelona, additional production in Sheffield, strings in Philadelphia, mixes in New York, Jersey, Miami, Las Vegas and every studio in London with a Neve mixing desk, then back to Sterling in NYC for mastering.

RARE GROOVES (Influential journey)
Before I began collaborating on 'Overpowered', I took a trip to New York to do a PA. Danny Krivit asked me to come and sing 'Forever More', a Moloko song. It had become (three years after its release) a kind of anthem at his party. Just one Sunday a month, the '718 sessions' has taken over where 'Body and Soul' left off. Like a Northern Soul, Sunday "all-day-er" with Vogue-ing. I sang to the Françoise K version; a stripped down, purely electronic remix, it exposes the architecture of the song and its pure Disco functionality. Happy sad, sad happy. I also sang 'Cannot Contain This', another song from the Moloko album 'Statues'. I wouldn't have dreamt of doing anything from my solo album 'Ruby Blue' which was current but wasn't really PA material. I had a very good time and as if that wasn't enough, on asking Danny for a cheeky mix tape, he hands me a bundle of ten. A couple of hundred songs, some I knew and had danced to, and some I didn't. The songs with the highest play count in my ITunes were, 'Keep On' - D Train, 'Spank' - Jimmy Bo Horn, 'You're The One' - Little Sister, 'Number One' - Patrice Rushen, 'Together Forever' - Exodus, 'No Way Back' - Adonis, and the original Danny Krivit edits of 'You Got Me Running' - Lenny Williams and Diana Ross' 'No One Gets The Prize', a nine-minute opus, which was my number one most played. I also hammered Danny's edit of The Brand New Heavies' 'Stay This Way'.

Other stuff that crept in would be Robert Palmer, Gwen Guthrie, Lisa Stansfield, Freeze, Mantronic, Universal Robot Band, Rene & Angela. There's also a smidgen of Manchester, way back when I first heard acid house and got submerged into scruffy club culture. With 'Voodoo Ray' I crossed over from being a Sonic Youth/Jesus & Mary Chain obsessive to a dancefloor aficionado because Manchester was like that; bands like ACR and the Mondays loved Kraftwerk and Marvin Gaye and 808 State loved The Stooges and Can. I got signed to EMI because I reminded them of Robbie Williams.

SHEFFIELD SEX CITY (Starting the album)
When I began collecting my thoughts together and homing in on the influences that I wanted to feed into 'Overpowered' I felt the need to go back to Sheffield. I talked for a long time with Parrot, an old friend and someone I had always wanted to work with. I told him about all this old disco and house I'd been listening to and he gave me lists of more tracks he thought I should check out. We did wonder about how all this might fit into the current musical landscape, would anybody be listening? With dance music the way it was, who could be sure? Anyway, it seemed too natural not to go that way.

So I went to work with Seiji in West London, Andy Cato in Barcelona, Richard X in Hoxton and then to Miami to work with Jimmy Douglass and the boy Ill Factor, who at twenty-four manipulates the studio gear and computer plug-ins like a kid on a Nintendo; fast and with precision. Recording strings in Philadelphia (a bit of a dream for me) with Larry Gold (a legend) blew my mind. I was sending things back to Sheffield occasionally for perusal and sometimes a little tweak here and there. I also wrote a couple of songs with Parrot and his musical partner Dean Homer. 'Cry Baby' is a disco marathon of a track. Also 'Scarlet Ribbon's, the only really slow tempo song I've written in two years, loosely interpreted in a lover's rock style by my band in London and produced with Dan Carey.

I really lived it there for a while, only going to my bed and the studio. When it came to mixing, both Tom Elmhurst and Jimmy Douglas like to go on well into the morning. Dan Carey would stop at midnight. At the last minute Alex Cupper worked through the night to subtly "housify" the Andy Cato co-written 'You Know Me Better.'

FOOTPRINTS IN THE MORNING SNOW (New perspectives)
I did 95% of my writing on 'Overpowered' there and then, on the spot with my co-writers, most of whom I did not know at all at the before the process began. That was a new thing for me and I learned a lot. Seiji helped me break the back of it, with songs like 'Overpowered' and 'Footprints' we found a link between the music I had been obsessing about and what I could achieve in a, hopefully, modern way. I've made six albums in my career. The way I measure their success or failure varies. Now I believe you can go straight to a web site and access sales figures as Jimmy Douglass was happy to remind me, saying that "in this information age people can't bullshit anymore". Jimmy put the Fear of God into me. Picking me up every morning in Miami to take us to the studio, he would play mainstream black music radio and dissect it, give me a good talking to and generally point out how ridiculously simple it all was. A hard taskmaster, he'd only occasionally let slip a compliment. When we'd completed 'Checking On Me', he smiled and drawled, "you wrote your ass off on that one Ro-sheen".

CAFÉ SOLO (Herbert collaboration)
'Ruby Blue' was a minor miracle to me. In the days after Moloko's Brixton Academy gig, the last date of a year's touring, I went back to Brixton, to work with Mathew Herbert in The Dairy studios. His tiny room was crammed with what looked like, to me, NASA space technology. You could hardly move for old BBC sound equipment, a beautiful 60's French mixing desk that looked like something from 2001 a space odyssey, hand built Russian mikes, all manner of instruments and objects possessing something sonically particular. We did the whole record in that room, writing, recording (vocals, musicians, whole brass sections, bits and pieces, objects I'd bring from home) and we mixed it there.

Mathew's taste in sound is concerned with energy, his technique is straightforward. Using microphones and recording technology to capture something pure, organic, acoustic even. Matt would always put preference on the first take, stop me doing it again if he could. He wanted to get it down and start another song. It was fun and liberating, an antidote to some of Moloko's more overblown experiments. All this excitement didn't leave time for self-doubt. Had there been time, I might have asked myself whom did I think I was, going and making a record with this fella? I had only ever written songs with Mark Brydon and he had been my boyfriend. I had never before tried to make a record without that kind of support. It started with a piece of music made from the sound of scrap books and newspaper articles being ripped up and hit across the microphone, a few months later there was an album. Ruby Blue hasn't sold by the bucket load yet, but I am very proud of it....

DEATH BY CONCEPTUAL FASHION (Visualizing the music)
Scott King is the art director for 'Overpowered'. I have worked with him once before. He was creative director of Sleaze Nation when Elaine Constantine (Photographer) asked me to model in a fashion story she was shooting for them. We shot his idea, like a little movie, it was a narrative about a "small town pub band". I ended up on the cover of the magazine, pictured being shagged by a hairy rocker in the cabin of a parked transit van. My Mother was very proud. I reckoned that something about being a performer was a good place to start and showed him some bits from the Moloko Live DVD of the Brixton Gig. First thing he showed me was footage of David Bowie walking down a London high street in the video for 'DJ'. Scott's idea of me is like a kind of street-diva, ready for my close up in off the wall couture, even when getting my fill of beans and sausage down my local greasy spoon. Or like the Queen of the Tinkers photographed in resplendent garb, going for maximum impact whilst out shopping and/or shoplifting on the Cricklewood Broadway. For the 'Overpowered' single sleeve I was dressed in a Viktor & Rolf frock that comes with its own lighting rig attached to the body on a full back brace. The rig is very heavy scaffolding, like the stuff they use in music venues; the dress is hooked up on the rig so as to become rather like the sail of a big boat (great for shoplifting). It was very windy on the high street and I couldn't move my feet in the clogs, with the bits of wood nailed on, to make them into high heels! A stray gust of wind almost carried me over a couple of times. Luckily a burly Grip was put on hand, just out of shot, to catch me.

MOODY COW (Gearing up)
When shooting a record sleeve (Moloko's second album) up a Swiss mountain in the middle of a storm and going snow blind trying to milk a cow in a suit of armour (me, not the cow) I might wonder what's it all about? But I love the nonsense of it. Life is often mundane, spent waiting at the bus stop of our imaginations, planning what to do when the night bus finally gets you there. I fully admit that I'm a dreamer; I idle away downtime thinking about the future, the next collaboration, the next album and ultimately the performance. Obsessing about every detail of it. All this pre-planning and intentionality is kind of ironic considering I didn't choose this path; it chose me so to speak.

It's funny to me now how all this happened so accidentally...

I met a producer guy in Sheffield and made him smile when I asked if he liked "my tight sweater". I was 18 and full of it. He swept me off my feet, took me to the studio and proceeded to teach me all I needed to know about making records and singing and stuff. Fate, I guess. We both adored Larry Levan's edit of 'Seventh Heaven'. It was love. Still is.

Watch Dutch magazine interview



Click here to watch an interview with Roisin on the site of Dutch magazine Nieuwe Revu.

A tour ad from today's Guardian

27/09/2007

For those guilty of leaky naughtiness

Judging by recent posts on Ms Murphy's official message board, most of you have already heard or (illegally!) downloaded most songs of the new album. You naughty Roisin devotees!

The only way she will ever forgive you is if you also go out and BUY the album when it is released next month. She needs our support and, more importantly, great sales figures to obtain the superstar status she has been deserving for so long. If this doesn't happen, we may land up like this!

25/09/2007

Another gem from YouTube



Yes, yet another little gem from YouTube! This time we're treated to an exclusive view behind the scenes at the Let Me Know video shoot.

23/09/2007

Roisin at G.A.Y.

When Attitude magazine asked Roisin Murphy if she would ever perform at London's infamous G.A.Y. club, she replied she would "do it for the right reasons". Apparently she has found her reasons because she will be performing at G.A.Y. on the 13th of October. See here for more information and to get your entry Voucher.

20/09/2007

Vodafone awards

Not the largest pictures, I know, but Roisin's sun glasses and pink top were a real eye catcher at last night's Vodafone Live Music Awards. The ceremony was held in the Brompton Hall, London.

The writer(s) of the blog Big Pictures - World of Gossip declare their love for Roisin with a great picture from the same event. Check the article out here.

19/09/2007

Two album tasters online

Roisin's very own MySpace has been updated with two tasters of the new album. Click here to listen to clips of You Know Me Better and Cry Baby.

16/09/2007

Bag Lady

Roisin was out and about in her home town London last night. The occasion: London Fashion Week. Let's face it, she knows how to make a statement!

15/09/2007

Let Me Know - Joe Negro remix + video



This is the Joe Negro remix of Let Me Know. Enjoy!

13 tracks on the new album

It has emerged that the Overpowered album will feature thirteen new Roisin melodies instead of eleven, which was previously reported on this very site. The twelfth and thirteenth track are respectively titled Body Language and Parallel Lives. At this stage it is not clear if the tracks will be available on all album formats and releases or if they are cd or UK only bonus tracks.

13/09/2007

Roisin in Zagreb


This lovely picture of Roisin was taken at last month's Vip INmusic festival, which took place in the Croatian capital Zagreb. See more pictures here.

11/09/2007

Let Me Know - full remix stream

You can now listen to a full stream of Andy Cato's remix of Let Me Know. Click here to check it out.

09/09/2007

Modern Timing - Lyrics


These are the lyrics of the Overpowered outtake Modern Timing, which is still available as a free download here.

Got to be a modern girl
To live inside a modern world

Oh this is super real
You need to find a lot of energy
For me
No it don't come free
Cause it's the creme-de-la-creme
And it's all right

Let's take a ride
Through the city see it come to live
Straight through the lights
I'll be standing my ground
Turn the lights out
Close the door

Got to be a modern girl
To live inside a modern world
Always be calm, be cool and collected
Non stop boogie, don't stop
Non stop living, can't stop
Non stop boogie, won't stop
Non stop
Modern Timing

Got to be a modern girl

Mister laser-beam
I think we have a little chemistry between
It's a crazy scene
It's gotcha gotcha doing back flips for me
I take no side
I'll do anything I have to do to survive
This modern life's about taking control
New sensations take their toll

Got to be a modern girl
To live inside a modern world
Always be calm, be cool and collected
Non stop boogie, don't stop
Non stop living, can't stop
Non stop boogie, won't stop
Non stop
Modern Timing

Non stop boogie, don't stop
Non stop living, can't stop
Non stop boogie, won't stop
Non stop
Modern Timing

Roisin impresses Perez

When Hollywood's (self-proclaimed) most-hated web site says you can do no wrong you know you are going places. Gossip blogger Perez Hilton gave Roisin's video for Let Me Know thumbs-up.

Click here to check his post out.

08/09/2007

Let Me Know video premiere



Wicked! No other words needed.

Roisin's got Attitude

Roisin was interviewed by UK gay monthly Attitude. As the interviewer found out, Roisin's first (and probably only) lesbian kiss was an experience to remember. For all the wrong reasons!


07/09/2007

Daily Star report

There is a short article on Roisin in the music section of today's Daily Star. The article talks about Roisin unveiling her new album. The writer seems very impressed by Roisin as a performer:

"Careering off into the sunset like a modern Marlene Dietrich, she oozed sensuality and her melodic imagination knows no bounds".

However, there is no word on where and when this event took place. Was it last night's Cois Fharraige performance? The article also comes with a (new?) photo of Roisin, sporting a shorter and blonder hairdo.

Click here to read the article online.

Behind the scenes...again



This is a view behind the scenes at the album cover shoot for Roisin's new album, which took place in London a few months ago. The soundtrack is a preview of the second track on the album, You Know Me Better.

05/09/2007

Overpowered album pre-order

You can now pre-order the Overpowered album, which will be released on the 15th of October. If you are quick, you could receive a singed copy of Roisin's latest long player. This is what recordstore.co.uk says on their site:

We have 200 copies of the album exclusively signed by Roisin. The first 200 customers to order their copy through recordstore will be sent this highly collectable version.

Click here to order your copy now!

04/09/2007

Rois-Inspiration

Check out the blog Alj-Alj to see how the cover image of Let Me Know has inspired one of my fellow bloggers to create some very cute graphic artwork. Well done!

Foolish - Lyrics

It was only yesterday
The silence broke
Of everything in every way
The silencae spoke
'T was on a night like this one
I heard it say
Just about any kind of anything
To make me stay

Oh foolish
Harmless
Foolish, harmless child
The body is timeless
You can't climb this
Stare after golden sky with stare

There is never any remedy
For what we've got
Just memories of memories
Too soon forgot
With every kind of extacy
Is what you get
Every rose upon a thorn we see
We soon regret

Oh foolish
Harmless
Foolish, harmless child
The body is timeless
You can't climb this
Stare after golden sky with stare

Oh foolish
Harmless
Foolish, harmless child
The body is timeless
You can't climb this
Stare after golden sky with stare

I'm in love and it's childsplay baby
Found a door to another world
And if you don't wanna make it make sense
Any a fool will take you there

And if you don't wanna make it make sense
And if you don't wanna make it make sense

Oh foolish
Harmless
Foolish, harmless child
The body is timeless
You can't climb this
Stare after golden sky with stare

02/09/2007

Off And On leak

One of the results of Roisin's much discussed collaboration with Calvin Harris and Cathy Dennis has emerged on the Internet. The track is titled Off and On and displays the childlike qualities of Roisin's voice as she is singing about getting her life back together after a bad relationship. Click here to check it out.

01/09/2007

Let Me Know remix on the radio

The incredibly catchy and funky Joe Negro Mix of Let Me Know was played in full on Gaydar Radio today. Where the original version failed to impress many of us, this remix is most definitely a floor filler. Another club classic in the making!

European release Overpowered single

Overpowered has been released as a six track card sleeve cd-single in various European countries over the past few weeks. This is the tracklisting:

1. Overpowered
2. Seamus Haji Remix
3. Kris Menace Remix
4. Loose Cannons Mix
5. Herve And Roisin In The Secret Garden Mix
6. Kris Menace Remix Instrumental

Note: The last track is not listed on the sleeve, therefore this version of Overpowered could also be called Kris Menace Dub or something of the kind.

Update: Roisin Live


This is an updated list of Roisin's upcoming live shows this Summer/Autumn:

September
Fri 7 - Cois Fharraige Festival, Clare - Eire
Sun 9 - The Big Top@Bestival, Isle of Wight - UK
Thu 20 - The Hospital - Covent Garden, London - UK

October
Fri 19 - Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam - Holland
Sat 20 - Train, Aarhaus - Denmark
Sun 21 - Pumphaus, Copenhagen - Denmark
Tue 23 - Dabaser, Stockholm - Sweden
Thu 25 - Tavastia, Helsinki - Finland
Mon 29 - Klub Studio, Krakow - Poland
Tue 30 - Studola, Warsaw - Poland

November
Thu 01 - Kesselhaus, Berlin - Germany
Fri 02 - Roxy, Prague - Czech Republic
Sat 03 - Backstage Werk, Munich - Germany
Sun 04 - Arena, Vienna - Austria
Tue 06 - Alte Feuerwache, Mannheim - Germany
Wed 07 - Magazzini Generali, Milan - Italy
Thu 08 - Circolo degli Artisti, Rome - Italy
Sat 10 - Kaufleuten, Zurich - Switzerland
Sun 11 - Frison, Fribourg - Switzerland
Tue 13 - Le Nouveau Casino, Paris - France
Wed 14 - La Laiterie Club, Strasbourg - France
Thu 15 - Maison Folies, Lille - France
Fri 16 - Batschkapp, Frankfurt - Germany
Sat 17 - Live Music Hall, Cologne - Germany
Mon 19 - Ancienne Belgique, Brussels - Belgium
Fri 23 - Strp, Eindhoven - Holland
Sat 24 - Grosse Freiheit, Hamburg - Germany
Mon 26 - Dome/Corn Exchange, Brighton - UK
Tue 27 - Koko, London - UK
Thu 29 - Academy, Bristol - UK

December
Sat 01 - ABC, Glasgow - UK
Sun 02 - Academy, Manchester - UK
Wed 05 - Spring & Airbrake, Belfast - N. Ireland
Sat 08 - Village, Dublin - Eire