LCD Soundsystem are on their victory lap. In one sense.

Prior to the release of their 2010 critical favourite This Is Happening, main man James Murphy announced that it would be LCD Soundsystem's "last record". An odd declaration from a man who over the past decade, has emerged as an unlikely, 40-something creative force in todays genre-bending landscape. Not to mention consistent critical favourite and still-active head of the hugely influential DFA Records.

Now, after the recent release of two live albums (the in-studio London Sessions LP and a live document from the 2010 Hot Chip tour), the current eight piece touring band behind James Murphy's recording moniker are about to hang up their boots for good (he says). In Australia in August 2010 for the Splendour in the Grass festival and a couple of sideshows, the band are on their way back to wrap things up for good with a Big Day Out tour. No sideshows. After which, Murphy tells us, he's looking forward to actually making music again.

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Have you put an end date on LCD Soundsystem yet? At least in a live sense?

Not entirely. It's definitely this year. Is the end. And we're figuring out what we want to do. It really takes everyone sitting in a room. Talking about what we want to accomplish. Seeing what the best way to do it is, see if there's anything people feel like we didn't do, or they really want to try. Before, you know, we're home growing vegetables and stuff.

Is it something you're looking forward to or do you regret mentioning the hiatus?

I would never regret mentioning the hiatus if I didn't want to take one. I just wouldn't do it. But you know, it doesn't matter. I don't feel like I owe anybody to quit or keep going. I feel like I said it because that's what I felt and that's what I think is the right thing to do. Just to let Pat stay home and be an artist and a father. To let Tyler go back to his new baby and let Nancy get on with the eight other bands she's in. Everybody in our band...we never intended on being a professional band and nobody's life was set up to do it. It's really been a huge detour for everybody's life. It's been amazing, it's been the best detour possible. But still, we're not going to do it forever. It seemed like these three records were a good way to make a huge change after this.

I mean, LCD as a "thing" will be able to go on and still make music and stuff like that. I'll still make records and all that sort of stuff. I just feel like this will be the end of a certain type of career trajectory.


LCD Soundsystem - 'Drunk Girls'

Is it almost a bummer that the band has become so good live?

No, it would be more of a bummer if it wasn't [laughs]. It would be a terrible bummer if it wasn't a good band [laughter]. I like it. The built in expiration date - which we've had since the beginning, like nobody wanted to do this forever, any of us - has been part of what made us [what we are]. Whatever's good about us, partially came from that. That it wasn't a professional band, that it wasn't a band of people trying to get bigger all the time. We were just trying to do the best we possibly could, and I like that.

When a band hits it straps it presents a whole lot of new creative avenues. When I say it's a bummer, I mean thinking perhaps that you won't get to explore that path.

Not at all because nobody will stop doing creative work. Like, Pat is a sculptor and Nancy is an artist and sings in bands, and I'm going to make music. It's not particularly creative in a certain way, to fly around the world and play the same songs over and over. That's not a wildly creative endeavour. In some ways. You know, having that time instead to make things, to generate new work, just might potentially be more exciting. It's also less lucrative, for sure [laughs]. We can't sell records anymore, so the only money you make is by going on tour. But none of us got in this to be wealthy or famous. So, time to go home and make some stuff [laughs].

Do you suspect that not playing live will change the sound of what you're interested in?

Um...yes and no. I think [with LCD] it just started off as a singular project of mine, and we were into sort of a thing that was a band. Which had its own set of aesthetic rules. Ending touring and stopping at that junction, will let me go in possibly different directions if I feel like it. But I'll still be the same guy. Like it's not going to be a country band or a folk epic or hip-hop.

The recent London Sessions LP and the live record are a celebration of where you got to as a live band.

Well it wasn't intended to be. I mean, for me the intentions are often not artistic. They're often very mechanical. What we wanted to do is, we'd been asked to play radio stations on a regular basis. Like, asked to come in a do some songs. And I'm like, 'Well our set-up is so complicated and radio station studios are so ill-suited for us, that it's gotten harder and harder to do those things'. We've done a couple. And also we never have the time, it never lines up. They always want to do it on a different continent or whatever. So I thought, 'What about if we just book a studio and do it ourselves? Do like a Peel Sessions type thing where we record live but not in front of an audience. And if we can overdub the background vocals so that we don't have a lot of drums in them and stuff like that?'. You know, basically give it a quick mix and it's a weird little document of part of what we sound like live. I liked that, 'cause I always liked our radio sessions. So it was just an effort to record the radio sessions, and then give them out to radio stations.

But in fact, when we heard them all together we liked them. So we thought, 'Well why not let people have them?' [laughs]. Rather than a crappy performance because it's recorded really badly and we're all jammed into a tiny control room. [We thought] it would be nice to do something a little better.

Did it make you want to tinker with those recordings?

Oh I did. I mixed them. So that's enjoyable. I get to make them the way I want them and then send them away.

Is it a challenge to come up with new ideas, especially when you're touring so much?

No. In fact, I often come up with most of my ideas when I'm touring and then they lose steam by the time I get home. So that's another thing that's exciting [for me]. I'm looking forward to doing stuff. I'm kind of in a really good headspace now where I have a lot of ideas that I want to do. Which feels great, I'm just looking forward to having the time to do them.

LCD's become such a festival band in the last few years. Does your opinion of other bands change when you see them up close?

I very rarely watch other bands that we play festivals with. I'm a little too stressed out before we play before we see anybody. And when we used to play a little earlier on in the night, years ago, I would go watch bands after us and that was really fun.

I think the thing that changes my opinion about bands a lot of the time is that I'll meet them. And then after I meet them I'll go make sure I listen to their music [laughs]. That happens very often. I'll be like, 'Oh they seem like a nice person, I'm going to go hear what they make'. And it will be somebody huge that everyone else has already been listening to for years. On tour I don't really listen to music, because my ears are destroyed from playing shows all the time. So I have to go and make a special effort to listen.