Having toured the globe many times over as the frontman of LCD Soundsystem, James Murphy not only soldered a status as a sort of dance-punk poet laureate, he also steadily cultivated an impressively rounded palate for food, wine and travel.
It was an incremental education for the singer, songwriter, founder of the seminal DFA Records and, in more recent times, the part-owner of Brooklyn wine bar and restaurant The Four Horsemen. Until adulthood, he had barely flown in a plane. In fact, his broader explorations would not begin in earnest until his thirties in the mid-2000s when LCD Soundsystem graduated from New York’s downtown to worldwide repute.
“I went from not traveling apart from in punk bands driving in vans around the US to perpetually being in airports,” Murphy explains from New York City. “Suddenly I was living a lot of my life in Europe and Japan and South America—it was a remarkable, life-changing thing.”
Between music commitments, he immersed himself in culinary scenes at home and afar, befriending chefs like David Chang and René Redzepi and becoming a genuine gastronome with an attendant obsession with natural wines.
After LCD Soundsystem disbanded in 2011 (although they have since reformed), he channeled his energies into various ventures, including co-opening The Four Horsemen in 2015 with his Danish wife Christina Topsøe and two others. A homely space whose white walls and blonde wood lend it a Nordic-meets-Japanese vibe, its menu places a heavy emphasis on natural wines.
Beyond the bar, Murphy tends to a panoply of interests, having scored films, acquiring a Grammy last year with the newly active LCD Soundsystem, and traveling for select music projects, as well as with Topsøe and their son on vacation. “Although my wife is more adventurous,” he notes of their contrary preferences. “She wants to go to Sri Lanka to see elephants, she’s trekked through Bhutan and backpacked through Russia and China. My job, which takes me from city to city, means I’m sort of like a perpetual urbanist.”
Are there any places that frequently appear on your itinerary? I like traveling to places where I can ski. I used to snowboard when I was young and I learned to ski not that long ago, so I feel like a kid again. Like, it’s good to suck at something. I still enjoy going to Copenhagen, which I do a lot, and London and Japan. I have friends in different cities from my work and that draws me to places a lot.
Do you have a favorite hotel from touring with LCD Soundsystem? It’s since changed names, but the Great Eastern Hotel in London. The first show we ever played over there was at some party in their ballroom. I think it was the first fancy hotel any of us had ever stayed in and it blew our minds. We were like, “Look at these towels, look at this robe.” I always had the same room with a corner bathroom where you could take a bath and look out at East London. We became friends with them, so I would leave a box that had socks, toiletries, a turntable and a speaker, so that when I came to stay, they would have already set up everything I needed in the room like it was my apartment.
